
9 




fa 



MODERN SCEPTICISM, 

VIEWED IN RELATION TO 

MODEM SCIENCE. 



V 




i>4 



MODERN SCEPTICISM, 



"VIEWED IN RELATION TO 

MODERN SCIENCE; 

MORE ESPECIALLY IN REFERENCE TO THE DOCTRINES OF 

COLENSO, HUXLEY, LYELL, AND DARWIN, 

RESPECTING 

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE, THE ANTIQUITY OF 
MAN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 

r 

j. rV young, 

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN BELFAST COLLEGE. 
(AUTHOR OF "SCIENCE ELUCIDATIVE OF SCRIPTURE," ETC. ETC.) 




LONDON : 

SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 

6G, BROOK STREET. 
1865. 

[ALL BIGHTS BESERVED.] 



HABKILD, PPMlreR, LOSDOS. 



PREFACE. 



It is the aim of several recent publications of great 
notoriety to show that certain of the more momentous 
statements of Scripture are inconsistent with physical 
truth. And the writers of them arrive at this con- 
clusion under the guidance of what they affirm to be 
the light of sound reason, and well-established science. 

Any conclusion thus reached is assuredly entitled to 
acceptance ; and, by many persons, that just adverted 
to has been accepted ; but purely on the faith that the 
reasoning and the science are actually what they 
profess to be, and not, as they really are, spurious 
imitations of the genuine commodities, the worthless- 
ness of which would be discoverable by submitting 
them to the test of a scrutinising examination. 

Some, from sheer indifference, decline the trouble of 
this examination : — the controversy is a subject in 
which they take no interest, and in the issue of which 
they feel no personal concern. Others, from long- 
cherished convictions,— perhaps long-cherished preju- 
dices, having inherited their religious belief as they 
have their surnames, contentedly carry both through 
life, without any inquiry as to the origin of either ; and, 



PREFACE. 



despite the force of reason and common sense, would 
as soon think of changing one as the other. 

To neither of these classes of persons are the follow- 
ing pages addressed, for by neither would they be 
read. They are submitted to readers of inquiring 
minds — to those who would reverently follow the 
leadings of Truth, however humble the garb in 
which she presents herself, rather than obey the dic- 
tates of authority, though " arrayed in purple and fine 
linen " : — to those, in fact, who would not only give 
a reason for their faith, but also a reason for their 
zmfaith. 

I can conscientiously say that I have written this 
small volume purely and exclusively in the interest of 
Truth. I applied myself to the publications adverted 
to above, solely for the purpose of instruction ; and in 
the expectation that much which I had previously re- 
garded as Divine Truth would have to be considerably 
modified, if not wholly abandoned as untenable. The 
perusal has very agreeably disappointed me. I say it 
has agreeably disappointed me ; for however ready every 
honest mind must be to resign fictions for facts, it is 
nevertheless provoking to discover that all of past life 
has been spent in paying that homage to error that is due 
only to truth. A traveller wandering along the wrong 
path is, of course, grateful for being put right; yet 
he cannot but regret the profitless outlay of time 
and exertion which he has been beguiled into ex- 
pending. 

That the Bible contains " things hard to be under- 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



stood/' the Book itself expressly forewarns us. But 
whatever of these hard things may have perplexed my 
own mind, I can truly say that the sceptical writings 
examined in the following pages, have greatly contri- 
buted to dissipate obscurity, to confirm previous con- 
viction, and to strengthen faith. For the most part, 
they oppose the Scriptures on what they allege to be 
scientific grounds; but it only requires that they be 
read with that scepticism with which they were written 
—and which in scientific discussions is a laudable 
scepticism— in order to discover that they ^are only 
« the oppositions of science, falsely so called/' 

This allegation it is my purpose to establish in the 
present volume; and it is my sole purpose. I do not 
attempt to prove affirmatively, by physical science, the 
truth of any part of Divine Revelation; such an at- 
tempt would be as ridiculous as it would be presump- 
tuous. I have to do solely and exclusively with the 
arguments advanced to prove the negative : if these 
arguments are tenable, the subject-matter of them is 
damaged: if they are untenable, it remains unaffected 
by them. Revelation neither invokes human science 
to confirm its truths, nor does it challenge human 
science to disturb them. It does not stoop even to 
notice science at all; and in thus not deigning "to 
regard it, silently declines its feeble support,— and as 
silently defies its puny opposition. 

The present work is divided into five sections, the 
first of which is to be regarded as a general introduc- 



Till 



PREFACE. 



tion to what follows : tlie next three sections are de- 
voted to an examination of Bishop Colenso's book On 
the Pentateuch, in so far at least as the Mosaic narra- 
tives are impugned upon what the author affirms to be 
scientific grounds. And I think I have shown that the 
Bishop's science — his logic — and his general literary 
integrity, are upon a par, being all equally untrust- 
worthy. 

In the fifth section, I have endeavoured to convey 
to the general reader what I believe to be correct views 
of the authority of physical science, — what is its real 
scope, and what are its limitations. Exaggerated 
notions are often entertained as to the absolute finality 
of its decisions, even in reference to the physical causes 
it assigns for the phenomena with which its investiga- 
tions are occupied. It is thought, by many, and they 
act upon the impression, that if any physical cause be 
propounded which men of science generally receive and 
adopt, such general adoption is evidence sufficient that 
it must of necessity exist in the natural world; and 
that what opposes it would oppose nature. They 
believe that a physical principle which has thus received 
the sanction of physical science, can never be wrono- ■ 
little suspecting that it may be fairly questioned 
whether any such principle is ever right. 

I cannot but think that this popular error has been 
encouraged and taken advantage of by writers who, in 
pitting science against Revelation, wish every spectator 
of the conflict to come pre-possessed with the con- 
viction that the assailant wields only the weapons of 



PREFACE. 



unerring truth,— think what he may of the power 
attacked: that anything like retaliation would he 
futile ; for what vulnerable spot can there possibly be 
in the well- compacted armour of Science? 

I have considered it therefore to be a duty, in refer- 
ence to these erroneous impressions, and to the main 
purpose of the present undertaking, to enter at some 
length upon this question of the absolute authority of 
everything that goes by the name of physical science ; 
and to discriminate between what in its teaching is 
known to be true, and what is only supposed to be true. 
Suppositions, whether in physical science or in any- 
thing else, may be right or wrong. 

Physical theories, or hypotheses, when limited to, 
and suggested by, the observed phenomena they are 
contrived to explain, arc perfectly allowable, and in- 
deed necessary to the progress of science ; but then 
well-ascertained facts must always precede what in this 
way is offered to account for them. Nothing can be 
more unscientific than to frame theories first, and then 
to hunt up facts to be forced into conformity with them : 
— these must precede, not follow the invention of 
hypotheses. 

And it is this reversal of the procedure which genuine 
science always enjoins, that is the prevailing vice of 
much of the spurious science of the present day. 
Imagination supplies a theory which, if true, must in- 
evitably unsettle convictions, and disturb beliefs, m 
reference to matters which real science acknowledges, 
to be beyond its own restricted domain. A few things 



X 



PREFACE. 



— very few — are discovered which appear, as far as they 
go, to be in accordance with this theory. So far so 
good. But the theory itself comprehends a great deal 
more ; and upon the strength of one or two facts, not 
contradicting it, we are called upon to accept it as a 
whole ! 

The theories about the antiquity of Man, the origin 
of species, and the descent of the human race from apes 
and baboons, are all of this character. I have devoted 
a considerable portion of the fifth section to the task 
of shewing such to be the case. The theories them- 
selves, though exciting so much attention at present, 
are by no means new : they arc but revivals of old 
fancies, entertained by a few even English writers 
long ago. The ape-descent doctrine was a favourite 
speculation of Lord Monbocldo, in the last century, 
and the author of the well-known Botanic Garden, — 
an ancestor of the present Mr, Darwin — was an advo- 
cate, equally with the latter distinguished naturalist, 
of the doctrine of the evolution of the highest organisms 
from some far inferior and far remote life-germ. 

I think it may be reasonably questioned whether 
the supporters of these odd theories are really con- 
vinced of their truth themselves. A firm belief in 
them is scarcely consistent with practices which they 
countenance. They approve of the slaughter of 
Gorillas ! But, if actuated by their creed, with what 
profound respect ought not civilized men (more 
especially men of science) to regard the Gorilla ! And 
yet M. Du Chaillu, instead of reverentially raising his 



PREFACE. 



xi 



hat to him, when meeting with him in the neighbour- 
hood of the Gaboon, actually shot him —and even boasts 
of the unnatural crime ! How is it that the fratricide's 
Gorilla-blood did not warm towards his respectable 
and unoffending kinsman ? 

Theory and practice, however, are sometimes at 
variance in matters of equal importance ; and the advo- 
cates of the Ape-descent theory may be in earnest 
after all —as much so as were the early searchers after 
the Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher's Stone. But it 
may be safely predicted that all attempts to educe Man 
from the brute, will be about as successful as were 
those of the Rosicrucian Philosophers to transmute the 
baser metals into Gold. 

J. R. Y. 

March, 1865. 



CONTENTS. 



Section 1. — Preliminary Observations. 

TA.GE 

Logical inconsistencies of Modem Scepticism . . 1 

Certain natural phenomena inexplicable on physical prin- 
ciples . o 
Influence of Mind upon Matter .... 7 
A miracle no infringement of natural laws ... 8 
Creative acts are necessarily instantaneous . . 
Certain supernatural operations gradual. . . .10 
The natural features of the earth's surface obliterated by 

man, and other features impressed . . .11 

Proof that God is an immaterial and invisible Being . 15 

Man's ignorance of phenomenal causes . . .16 

Those which he adopts only conjectural hypotheses . 17 

Section II. — On the Deluge of Noah. 

The Bishop of Natal and his Zulu pupil on the impossibility 

of the Deluge ...... 18 

Syllabus of the Mosaic narrative . . . .20 

The Bishop's futile reasons for rejecting it . . . 21 

His misrepresentation of the phenomena of deluges, 

whether partial or universal . . . .25 

Deluges in general, that of Noah more especially, occasioned 

not by the waters rising, but by the earth sinking . 26 
The Ark rested on the present Earth, not on the dry land 

which had disappeared . . . . .27 

Conclusions deduced from the Mosaic account . • 29 

Dr. Colenso's difficulties, about the Ark resting on the icy 

top of Ararat, shewn to be imaginary . . .32 



xiv 



CONTENTS. 



The mistake of confounding the antediluvian with the pre- 
sent earth ...... 33 

Ample capacity of the Ark. No predatory animals . 35 

The Bishop's assumed knowledge of the Antediluvian Fauna 36 
How the Zulu should have been answered . . .39 

Colenso, Kalisch, and Miller respecting the hills of Auvergne 41 
Xo lithological evidences of Xoah's Deluge . . .44 

On the tendency to lateral motion in uprising land . . 46 

Objections by Hugh Miller to the universality of the Deluge 48 

On Adam naming all the Animals in one day . . 51 

Section III. — Ox the Post-Diltjvtan Creations. 

The animal and vegetable world renewed after the Flood . 53 
A change also effected in the ether permeating the atmos- 
phere . . . i . . i . .57 
Sceptical objections sufficiently answered by reasonable 

explanations . . . . . .59 

The explanations need not necessarily be the true ex- 
planations .... .60 

Two logical principles stated which must be always respected 61 

Controversial stratagems resorted to by sceptical writers . 64 

On the Rivers of Eden ..... 68 

Granville Pemi s criticisms on the second chapter of Genesis 69 
Remarks in reference to the circumstantial details with 

which the description of these rivers is given . . 72 

What is to be understood by God's resting on the 7th day . 74 

The Rev. Dr. Pusey's remarks on the word " Creation" . 77 

Section IV. — Specevlens of Dr. Colenso's Logic. 

The Bishop's argument to shew that Tents could not have 

been earned out of Egypt . . . .80 

When the children of Israel were harnessed were they armed % 83 

The Israelites on their march : their insuperable difficulties 85 

The lack of sustenance in the inhospitable wilderness . 86 

The Bishop's inconclusive reasoning thereon pointed out . 88 

The proof of the Bishop's position impossible . . 94 

Omnipotent Power eliminated from the Bishop's premisses 95 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

The Bishop's tamperings with Scripture, and his literary 

unfairness . . • • • .07 

His proof that animal food was eaten by the Antediluvians 00 
His proof from Geology that Thorns grew before the Fall . 100 
How did Eve get Needle and Thread for her Apron ? And 

how did God get the material for the Coats ? . . 101 

The Bishop's absurd reasoning as to the Census . . 103 

And his equally absurd application of it to the Hebrew popu- 
lation . . • • • .104 
The Bishop's extraordinary Astronomical discoveries . 105 
His adoption of the views of Agazzisin reference to different 

Centres of Creation . 107 
The Philosophical conclusions of Dr. Pritchard . . 100 

On the supposed fabricators of flint-instruments . . 112 

On the Bow of the Covenant . . . .111 

The Bishop's misrepresentations of what Geology affirms . 117 
Admonitory Remarks in reference to the foregoing discussion 110 
Note 1, on Dr. Colenso's obligations to Thomas Paine . 120 
Note 2, on the Bishop's Arithmetical absurdities as to the 

extent of the Israeli tish encampment . . .121 

Conclusion as to his total incompetency to deal fairly, 

honestly, and logically, with the subject . . 128 

Section V— On the Authoeity of Physical Science, and on 
some Modern Perversions of the term. 
Imprudence of regarding any phase of physical science as 

its final state . . • • .131 

The science of one age often obsolete in the next . . 132 
The authority of physical science extends only to observed 

phenomena 1^5 

Remarks of Sir John Herschel on this subject . . 137 

Distinction between laws of phenomena and physical causes 111 
An unknown immaterial agency implied in every ultimate 

14-1 

cause . . . • ■ • • • xw 
Herschel on the obscurity connected with the only act of 

direct causation of which we are conscious . • 145 

Hypothetical causes all that science demands . . 147 



XYi CONTEXTS. 



Yiews of Newton and Laplace as to the inexplicable nature 

of attraction, or gravitation . . * 149 

General principles inferred from the foregoing truths . 155 
The prevailing modern tendency to theorise in the absence 

of facts . . . . . - .157 

•On Mr. Darwin's theory respecting the origin of species . 158 

Tlis notions of the formation of the eye by development . 159 

Natural selection implies an unintelligible process . . 163 

Professor Huxley's assignment of Man's place in Nature . 164 
His derivation of Man from the Ape . . .166 

Development impossible except there be continuity . 167 

No evidence of any intermediate races . . . 168 
The fair conclusion from the facts adduced is that the 

development of Man from the Ape is impossible . 169 
-On Man's capacity and tendency to degenerate . . 170 
On the physical effects of change of habitat . .173 
The inadmissible assumptions in Sir C. LyelTs inquiries re- 
specting the Antiquity of Man . . . .175 
Inconclusive reasoning as to the Delta of the Mississippi . 177 
„ „ Falls of Niagara . . 179 
H Deposits of the Nile . 181 
On the tlint-implements of Abbeville . . . 183 
Nothing to prove they were worked by men . . 185 
Man must have been created in his normal condition . 189 
How is it that the Andaman has done so little and the Euro- 
pean so much? . . . . . 190 
Max Midler on diversity of language . . . 196 
"The origin of language contemporaneous with that of man 197 
Fossil bones, however like the human, can never prove that 

there was no subsequent creation of superior beings . 198 
Instances in which statements of the Bible have anticipated 

physical discoveries ..... 201 
Conjectures as to the real origin and intention of the ancient 

flint-implements . . . . .207 

Dr. Falconer on the reputed fossil man of Abbeville . 216 
Note in reference to recent speculations on the different 

races of men . . . . . • 219 

Supplementaiy Note on the miracle of J oshua . . 223 



MODEKN SCEPTICISM 

IX RELATION TO 

MODEKN" SCIENCE. 



SECTION I. 

PRE LIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

Ax unprejudiced reader of the sceptical productions of 
tlie present day cannot but be surprised at the infirmity 
of reasoning' which pervades them. 

One is continually bewildered with logical puzzles 
and paradoxical assertions ; and with contradictory 
doctrines and assumptions, not merely inconsistent 
with scientific truth, but repugnant to common sense. 

The writers of these works recognize the existence of 
a Supreme Being — the Creator of heaven and earth ; 
and, as such, they profess to believe that the worlds 
they contemplate were brought into existence out of 



2 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



nothing, and by the mere flat of His Will* : tliat He 
communicated to them their initial movements, and 
impressed the physical laws in obedience to which 
those movements are continued, and the stability of the 
planetary system maintained. How any man can give 
unhesitating assent to the truth of these astounding 
positions : — that the worlds around him were produced 
without any physical material, that they were put in 
motion without any physical impulse, that they were 
endued once for all with an all-pervading principle, in 
virtue of which they present a vast self-governing 
machine, every part of which so moves that, in the 
absence of external interference, any permanent de- 
rangement of the system is demonstrably impossible : — 
we say, how any man can accept these truths, and yet,, 
at the same time, declare his belief that the Being 
whose will alone accomplished all this has not poiver 
to do as he pleases with what he has thus created ; — 
how he can openly avow both these as articles of his- 
theological or philosophical creed, is a psychical 
phenomenon hard to account for on any other 
hypothesis than that of mental obscuration. 

He who maintains that matter never had a Creator, 
that Nature and its laws never had a beginning, is 

* Although we here adopt the xxsual phraseology, " created out of 
nothing," the language is objectionable, as it seems to imply the pre- 
existence of that out of which, as out of a real material, something was 
formed. This was noticed long ago by Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his 
Demonstration of the Being of God. He observes that " the true notion 
of creation is not a forming something out of nothing, as out of a mate- 
rial cause, but only a bringing something into being, that before had no 
being at all.' 



INCONSISTENCIES OF MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



3 



logically justified in rejecting " the hypothesis of a 
God." But it is certainly a very paradoxical feature 
in the books alluded to, that the writers of them unhesi- 
tatingly receive this hypothesis — that they have faith 
sufficient to admit as true the most mysterious and 
inconceivable proposition that was ever propounded, 
and yet are so incredulous as to reject as false another 
proposition, immeasurably less mysterious and incon- 
ceivable, and which, in fact, is nothing but a corollary 
fairly deducible from the former. 

Every man of unclouded intellect must regard as 
truisms the positions that the Being who has willed 
the creation of matter out of nothing can will its anni- 
hilation ; and that He who has given it motion can also 
give it rest ; for the exercise of power or will in the one 
case, is but the exercise of the same power or will in the 
other, in the opposite direction. 

Those who admit the truth of certain miraculous 
events recorded in Scripture, and at the same time deny 
the truth of other like events, as clearly and as empha- 
tically declared in the same Record to be historical 
facts, and to have been due to the very same agency, 
argue upon a most capricious and illogical principle. 
From a group of recorded occurrences, all equally de- 
clared to have been supernatural, they make an arbitrary 
selection ; and, in direct contradiction to the Record, 
treat these as if they were affirmed to be, not superna- 
tural, but natural occurrences ; and labour to show that 
physical science is inadequate to account for them. 
And, in thus concluding, they affect not to see — and 



4 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



expect other people also to be blind to the fact — that 
they are actually verifying instead of falsifying the 
declaration of the Record; inasmuch as they shew 
that nature alone could not possibly have done what is 
expressly declared to have been supernatural. 

The line of argument they adopt is this : — A cer- 
tain work is said to have been performed : there are 
but two agents, A and B, vastly differing in power, to 
one or other of which, independently, or to both, con- 
jointly, the performance must necessarily be attributed. 
It is proved that the inferior of these agents, B, is, 
alone, incompetent to the task : not a word is said 
about the superior agent, A : — he is silently ignored ; 
and the conclusion is, that the work in question is of 
impossible performance ; whereas everybody of undis- 
torted intellect must see that the logical conclusion is, 
that the work, if performed at all, must have been per- 
formed either by A alone, or by A and B together. 

A specimen of this kind of reasoning we have already 
given at page ix. of the Preface to a former volume.""** 
It is recorded in the Bible that the vast hosts of the 
children of Israel, young and old, were suddenly sum- 
moned to flee out of Egypt under circumstances of 
appalling danger and difficulty : the physical powers of 
the people, and the physical obstacles to be surmounted, 
were such as to render such a flight, without external 
aid, impracticable. But the story relates that they 
were conducted by Jehovah. Bishop Colenso tries the 
experiment on a small scale with forty people, led by 

* Science Elucidative of Scripture. 



CERTAIN PHENOMENA PHYSICALLY INEXPLICABLE. 



5 



himself, and lie fails ; and thence concludes that the 
scriptural statement is "utterly incredible and im- 
possible."* If a writer feel himself justified in deny- 
ing the possibility of a revealed fact — whether it be the 
Exodus of the Israelites, the Deluge, or the miracle 
recorded in the Book of Joshua, on the ground that it 
is contrary to Nature, or to the principles of physical 
science ; why in common fairness and consistency, does 
he not, on the same ground, reject similarly mysterious 
unrevealed facts, equally contrary to Nature and to 
physical science ? If it be contrary to physical prin- 
ciples that a moving world should ever have been 
stopped in its orbit, it is equally contrary to those 
principles that it should ever have moved in an orbit. 
If it be contrary to physical principles that it should 
ever be destroyed, it is equally contrary to them that 
it should ever have been created. Can the motions of the 
earth be accounted for on physical principles alone ? To 
what physical principle is its diurnal rotation referable ? 
Whence came the initial projective impulse, without 
which its orbital course round the sun would have been 
physically impossible ? To these questions science can 
give no answer • as every tyro in science well knows. 

* The following is the Bishop's experimental proof of this impossi- 
bility (Part I., p. Gl): — "Remembering, as I do, the confusion in my 
own small household of thirty or forty persons, when once we were 
obliged to fly at dead of night, having been roused from our beds with a 
false alarm that an invading Zulu force had entered the colony, had 
evaded the English troops sent to meet them, and was making its way 
direct for our Station, killing right and left as it came along, I do not 
hesitate to declare this statement (Exod. xii., 37, 38) to be utterly 
incredible and impossible " ! 



6 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



But writers who thus talk about supernatural events 
being contrary to physical principles, use " words 
without knowledge." It is not because a subject is 
apart from, and above the reach of physical science, 
that it is, therefore, adverse to it. Be the subject what 
it may, it is unquestionably entitled to our acceptance 
only in so far as it is true. And if it be not a depart- 
ment of physical investigation, its truth or falsity can 
never be tested by an appeal to physical laws. If, 
however, claiming an exemption from the operation of 
these laws, or only a partial exemption, it nevertheless 
embraces among its declared facts dogmas or principles 
which are in direct opposition to clearly ascertained 
scientific truth, the so-called " facts " must unquestion- 
ably be rejected as so many fables or myths; because 
it is impossible that any one truth can ever contradict 
any other truth, how diverse soever the sources whence 
the two are derived. 

The movements of every machine of human con- 
trivance are all in obedience to physical laws. The 
constructor plainly foresees that such must be the 
case ; and he so disposes the several parts of it that, 
in obeying these laws, the machine may, at the same 
time, carry out his own intentions and purposes : these 
were settled and determined before the machine was, 
as it were, delivered over to the more complete autho- 
rity of physical laws. These could not have formed 
the wheels, cut the teeth, or adjusted the levers. 
Every machine embodies in itself the evidence of two 
totally distinct agencies ; agencies which, though thus 



DIVINE POWER ACTING WITH PHYSICAL LAWS. 

distinct, have nevertheless operated throughout the 
construction in complete concert, and (so to speak), 
with entire singleness of view to the object to be 
accomplished. The intellect and will have shaped and 
arranged physical nature's raw materials; and, thus 
modified by mind, the matter is then returned to 
nature, whose forces are ready to give motion and 
activity to what, without her immaterial coadjutor in 
the work, would have ever remained at rest. 

No machinist ever does knowingly anything himself 
that material nature alone can do for him : he some- 
times does so unwittingly, from ignorance of the extent 
of her powers, but not otherwise. Thus, in the earlier 
contrivances for the Electric Telegraph, the conducting 
wire was made to complete a circuit, and to return to 
the battery; but it was afterwards discovered that the 
returning portion of the wire might be dispensed with, 
that nature alone could do half the business, and that 
for this half artificial aid was therefore superfluous : 
, such aid was in consequence at once withdrawn. 

We may reasonably presume that the Almighty 
architect proceeds in a way analogous to that of his 
feeble image. The Divine Mind supplements the laws 
he has impressed upon matter— not by enlarging those 
laws, but by adding to their operations his own direct 
acts. But he thus interposes only when the laws of 
nature, left to themselves, are inadequate to accom- 
plish his purposes: they cannot create matter, nor 
even control its impressed movements beyond the 
limits of their prescribed jurisdiction— they are not 



8 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



almighty. He who is Almighty — the Supreme Mind, 
cannot be in subjection to material laws, or hindered, 
by their imperative and coercive demands, from doing 
whatever he wills to do with what he has created ; 
although, in so far as we know, he never has ' willed 
the abrogation — or as the phrase goes — " the viola- 
tion/" of any natural law whatever. In the special 
manifestations of His power, in the regions of Nature, 
he has never done more, that we know of, than what, 
on a scale proportionate to the vastly inferior power 
he possesses, man himself does with the material 
things around him. The human hand, in obedience 
to the human will, takes of these things, and produces 
with them combinations and arrangements which the 
laws of material nature alone could never have pro- 
duced ; and yet without the slightest infraction of any 
of those laws. Man lias never infringed physical law, 
solely because he has not the power. God, in so far 
as we know, has never infringed it, solely because He 
has not willed to do so. A miracle is no such infringe- 
ment : it is something either wholly apart from nature, 
a thing that nature has neither power to perform nor 
power to oppose ; or else it is something brought about 
by the exercise of supernatural power, in the use of 
natural agencies, as instruments, or means, to the pre- 
determined end. 

Whatever the Deity wills to take place does take 
place ; and, if he so please, instantaneously. Neither 
nature itself, nor man's operations upon it, can pro- 
duce instantaneous effects. Natural and artificial 



CREATIVE ACTS OF GOD ALWAYS INSTANTANEOUS. 9 

operations all require for their performance time, the 
element with which God's acts alone can dispense. If 
light is to be produced by his direct fiat, it is pro- 
duced at once, in whatever part of the universe its 
presence is commanded : if its production is to be the 
delegated office of a physical agent (the sun), that 
agent requires eight minutes to illumine the earth. 
« He created light and the sun ''—light first, and the 
sun afterwards.* 

But although the creative acts of Deity are always 
instantaneous, and although time is never an indis- 
pensable requisite with Him, yet He is not precluded 
from the use of time. We say that the creative acts 
of Deity must always be instantaneous, because in 
the passage from nothing to something the idea of 
progress— of the successive steps of a process, is ne- 
cessarily excluded. There cannot be development or 
growth from an absolute nonentity, but only from 
some pre-existing germ, or material principle. The 
bringing into being that which before (no matter how 
short a time before) had no being at all, must neces- 
sarily be an instantaneous act : there is no room for the 
interposition of time. But certain supernatural opera- 

* Modern philosophers have concluded that what we call light is not 
an emanation from a luminous body, any more than sound is an emana- 
tion from a sonorous body. There is a luminiferous medium in the one 
case, and an aerial medium in the other. Light is produced by undu- 
lations of the luminiferous ether ; sound by undulations of the air. The 
creation of the material (the ether) preceded that of the physical agent 
(the sun) which was to act upon it, as it is reasonable to suppose would 
be the case. (See on this subject the author's Science Elucidative of 
Scripture.) 



10 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



tions, like natural or artificial processes, may be gradual. 
It may please the Supreme Being to manifest His 
power in nature in an especial manner by continuous 
action, the effect of which may be a progressive ad- 
vance, clearly discernible, towards a climax as clearly 
pointed to, and ultimately inevitable, unless the opera- 
ting Power be withdrawn. This ultimatum may be 
some overwhelming calamity, the infliction of which 
may be thus delayed purely in forbearing mercy and 
tenderness towards those upon whom it is threatened, 
and from whom it may yet be averted, upon certain 
conditions complied with on their part, before those 
progressive operations culminate in the catastrophe to 
which they manifestly tend.* 

Indeed, what we call natural catastrophes may not 
always be the uncontrolled or spontaneous operation 
of mere physical causes. Though not in the strictest 
sense, miraculous or supernatural, yet nature's agencies, 
by superior power, even by human skill, may be di- 
verted from their wonted directions, conducted along 

" At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning 
a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it. If that' 
nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will 
repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."— Jeremiah xviii. 
7, 8. 

This passage is not quoted here in order to justify the statement 
above, since in the present preliminary article nothing is considered to 
he advanced hut what reason and observation authorises, independently 
of any appeal to Scripture. But in the following section, on the Deluge, 
this and similar texts sanction the view there taken of the progressive 
.character of the " flood of waters." 



NATURE'S ASPECTS OFTEN MODIFIED 1SY MAN. 11 



a prescribed path, concentrated on an indicated spot, 
and there be left to work their natural effects* 

In no region of the earth where civilized men have 
congregated have the features spontaneously impressed 
upon the soil by nature been allowed to remain urn- 
meddled with. In many places man has entirely 
obliterated those features, and by his own power has 
compulsorily led nature, forced nature, to assume a 
different aspect: impediments which nature had op- 
posed to the accomplishment of his designs, he has 
removed out of his way : he has levelled hills, and 
tunnelled rocks ; diverted the waters out of the chan- 
nels nature had prepared for them, and caused them 
to flow in those of his own construction; irrigated 
arid wastes, and fertilized sandy and barren deserts : 
has, in fact, subjugated nature to his own purposes ; 
taking the materials she has supplied, and determining 
where they shall act, and germinate, and fructify, even 
in the desolate places, where she herself had made no 
provision for plant to sprout, or flower to bud. 

If mere man does all this with nature, " how much 

* In speaking of an act as " not in the strictest sense miraculous or 
supernatural," we merely mean to discriminate between what Supreme 
Power performs at once, by an act of volition, and what the same Power 
brings about by employing, as instruments, the agencies and forces with 
which He has already endowed nature. In the one case, nature is super- 
seded; in the other, subordinated. 

We may further remark here, that whenever we speak, as above, of 
,the " spontaneous operations" of nature, we are not to be understood as 
implying that anything like volition resides in mere matter ; but only 
that the laws, impressed upon matter by the Creator, are left unimpeded 
And uncontrolled in their operations. 



12 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



greater tilings " may not man ; s Creator do ? Luxu- 
riant vegetation, flourishing above an originally and 
a naturally sterile surface, is not less a natural phe- 
nomenon, because the hand and skill of man are 
traceable in it • nor are the storm and the earthquake 
less natural phenomena, though a superior power may 
give them determiu ateness, as to time and place ; and 
by using the agencies already prepared to His hand, 
and by His hand, may intensify or mitigate their vio- 
lence as He pleases. In either case the observed phe- 
nomenon is strictly referable to a physical cause, this 
being its immediate antecedent. 

We are not here affirming, however, that every one 
who perishes by shipwreck, or earthquake, or light- 
ning, or inundation, is the object of Almighty ven- 
geance, or that these, and such like calamities, are 
" judgments, " as they are called. All we say is, that 
the agencies of nature, which man even can make 
subservient to his purposes, can be employed, as in- 
strunients, by the Deity, to accomplish His purposes, 
and that, too, without any violation of the laws He has 
impressed upon matter. 

TThy, in cariying out these purposes, usually them- 
selves altogether inscrutable by us, destruction of life 
should be permitted, is a question which man can 
never answer, and one on which it ill becomes him, 
in his utter ignorance, to dogmatise. Nevertheless, we 
must not close our eyes to the fact, that God, if He 
so please, can exercise an infinitely greater command 
over the agencies of nature than man can do. Nature, 



WHAT THE CREATOR HAS MADE, HE CAN USE. 13 



left to itself, does not manufacture gunpowder, for 
instance, though it supplies to man all the materials. 
And if he can collect and combine these to suit his own 
purposes in a w ay that nature alone could never have 
done, surely Divine Power can exercise an authority 
immeasurably more extensive over the same materials. 

No man in his senses can maintain that He who 
-created the materials cannot afterwards use them ; 
while he who cannot create one, can nevertheless use 
them all. 

And it is very important to notice, in the argu- 
ments of such writers as Dr. Colenso, that what they 
-avowedly aim at proving is, not that certain alleged 
interpositions of supernatural power in the region of 
nature never did take place, but that they never 
could take place— that the declared events are im- 
possible. 

Those who read the works here alluded to, have 
their minds continually thrown into a state of bewilder- 
ment and perplexity by such assertions as this. The 
authors use a term of all-importance in their dis- 
cussions, in a sense widely different from its general 
acceptation, and that, too, without the slightest warning 
as to the arbitrary limitation under which they them- 
selves are pleased to view it. What does Dr. Colenso 
really mean by the term " God " ? An Omnipotent 
Being he certainly does not mean. What does he 
mean ? In mere logical fairness, and straightforward 
candour to his readers, he ought to feel it to be his 
duty to answer this question ; and his uniform silence 



14 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



in reference to a matter of such paramount moment^ 
in its bearings upon the doctrines he inculcates, looks 
very like a wily concealment of what, if revealed, 
Mould destroy the sale of his books among all but 
persons of atheistical tendencies.* 

Our inability to conceive how the Deity can direct 
as He pleases the agencies of material nature, arises 
solely from the limited range of all our powers and 
faculties — even of our power of conception. We 
cannot adequately conceive how Mind alone, without 
the intervention of material instruments, can operate 
upon Matter. VTe feel that without bodily organs — 
even without the hand and the eye — man would be 

* The most explicit statement of Dr. Coleriso's Theism, -which the 
present writer can find in his work, is contained in the three proposi- 
tions following (Part IV., p. 3) : — 

1. God is the Creator and Preserver of all things. 

2. Man is made in the image of God. 

3. All that God has made is very good. 

These, he says, are the "great principles which the pious writer of 
this chapter (Genesis i.) lays down distinctly, amidst all his speculations, 
upon the construction of the universe." 

The above propositions, no doubt, embody the truth, and nothing but 
the truth; though certainly not the whole truth. The whole truth 
respecting the Supreme Being is not comprised in the first chapter of 
Genesis. The God of the Jews and Christians can do more than create 
and preserve : He can destroy, as well as create ; modify and re-arrange, 
as well as preserve. St. Peter characterises as " scoffers,*' and ' ; wil- 
lingly ignorant" of what God has actually done, those who say — " Since 
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as from the beginning of the 
creation." People in general, including all who receive the Scriptures, 
regard i; God" and " Omnipotent Being'' as interchangeable terras. Dr. 
Colenso does not so regard them ; and we think he owes it to his readers 
to declare distinctly to what extent his God is shorn of the unlimited 
power thus attributed to the God of Revelation, by both Jews and . 
Christians. 



THE SUPREME BEING NECESSARILY IMMATERIAL. 15 



comparatively powerless in reference to his command 
over the external world, even though his mind were of 
a far higher order than it is. Yet we know that to the 
pupreme Mind there cannot be attributed any con- 
nection with bodily organs. We say we know this ; 
for the creation of matter necessarily implies the non- 
existence of its antecedent presence anyivhere ; it 
implies, therefore, the non-existence of material organs 
in its Creator. And even if by the creation of matter 
were to be understood merely the creation of what 
was external to the Being (imagined to have material 
parts) creating that external matter, yet hands could 
never be employed where there was nothing to handle, 
nor eyes where there was nothing to see. 

The Creator of matter, therefore, God, mnst be an 
immaterial, and, consequently, an invisible Being ; and 
if an immaterial Being can create matter, the same im- 
material Being can surely deal with it afterwards. 

It is certainly hard to conceive of habitation or 
locality, as respects such a Being ; but it is also hard 
to conceive the same in reference to the immaterial 
principle within ourselves. Even in physical nature 
we are surrounded by what is wholly inconceivable, 
though not the less true. There resides, in the sun 
and planets, an influence in virtue of which each one 
affects all the others, and all the others that one — a 
governing and coercive influence. We call it gravi- 
tation; but, in reality, we know nothing about it beyond 
its effects. What this mysterious inhabitant of matter 
essentially is, and how it exerts its powerful and im- 



16 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



perativc influence over remote bodies with which it has 
no visible connection, we are profoundly ignorant. It 
is the same with the other of nature's great agents — 
electricity, magnetism, and even light. Of these we 
know absolutely nothing beyond the phenomena pre- 
sented to our observation. We speak, indeed, of the 
electric fluid, the magnetic fluid, the luminiferous^mc?; 
but these are terms invented rather to conceal our 
ignorance than to proclaim our knowledge; and no 
man of science ever uses any one of them as truly des- 
criptive of the real essential character of the pheno- 
menal cause. 

In every department of scientific research — whether 
physical or metaphysical — phenomena alone, addressed 
either to our outward senses or to our inward con- 
sciousness, comprehend the whole of the perfectly 
secure materials out of which man constructs his 
systems of philosophy. All beyond, whenever he ven- 
tures beyond, is but speculative inference and con- 
jecture. 

By repeated observation, or repeated experiment, 
the philosopher becomes satisfied that certain natural 
phenomena brought under his notice — to whatever de- 
partment of physical enquiry he directs his attention- 
have such characteristics of order, and invariable con- 
nection of antecedent and consequent, as to clearly 
imply some constant originating principle or agency to 
which those phenomena may be referred as their phy- 
sical cause. Often, however, he has to seek for such a 
cause in his own mind ; and what nature refuses to 



PHENOMENA THE SUBJECT OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 17 

disclose to him lie is left to supply, as best lie may, by 
mere hypothesis and ingenuity of invention. His 
hypothetical cause must, of course, be a possible cause ; 
and if it prove to be the real cause, all the phenomena 
will naturally flow from it. They may, however, all be 
only logical consequences of an hypothesis which, in 
reality, nature would reject, if offered, so to speak, to 
her acceptance ; and ages may elapse before it can 
thus be brought to the test. Witness how many cen- 
turies passed during which even the common pheno- 
mena of day and night were referred to a wrong cause, 
and during which the rise of water in a common suc- 
tion pump was attributed to nature's abhorrence of a 
vacuum. 

We presume that every unprejudiced reader will 
yield his assent to what has now been advanced. The 
facts stated are indisputable; and the observations 
with which they have been connected will, we think, be 
regarded, in the main, as at least reasonable. Keeping 
these before the mind, we now proceed to consider the 
scriptural account of the Deluge. 



c 



SECTION II. 



THE DELUGE. 

It will have been observed that not a single principle 
or doctrine, derived from Holy Writ, has been intro- 
duced by way of authority for any of the foregoing- 
statements, except, indeed, the fundamental truth of 
the existence of an All-powerful Being. To the candour 
and common sense, therefore, of every one not an 
atheist, they^equally appeal, whether he be a believer 
in Scripture or not. 

We now refer to the Bible; and without assuming 
anything, either one way or the other, as to the 
inspired character or historical accuracy of " the story 
of the Flood/' proceed to inquire whether there be any 
inherent^impossibilities, or contradictions, in the re- 
corded events : — whether, in fact, there be anything in 
the narrative to justify such a comment as the fol- 
lowing : — 

" While translating the Story of the Flood, I have 
had a simple-minded, but intelligent native — one with 
the docility of a child, but the reasoning powers of 
mature age — look up, and ask, ' Is all that true ? Do 
you really believe that all this happened thus, — that 
all the beasts, and birds, and creeping things, upon the 
earth, large and small, from hot countries and cold, 
came thus by pairs, and entered into the ark with 



THE DELUGE DECLARED TO BE IMPOSSIBLE ! ID 



Noah ? And did Noah gather food for tliem all, — for 
the beasts and birds of prey, as well as the rest?' My 
heart answered, in the words of the Prophet, ' Shall a 
man speak lies in the name of the Lord V (Zech. xiii. 3.) 
I dared not do so. My own knowledge of some branches 
of science, of Geology in particular, had ^been much 
increased since I left England, and I now knew for 
certain, on geological grounds, a fact, of which I had 
only had misgivings before, viz., that a Universal De- 
luge, such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, could not 
possibly have taken place in the way described in the 
Book of Genesis, not to mention other difficulties which 
the story contains."* 

The story here referred to records the following 
events : — 

1. That because of the general wickedness and de- 
pravity into which rebellious man had sunk, God had 
communicated to Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," 
his resolve] to bear with this rebellion no longer than 
for the space of 120 years more; at the expiration of 
which time, if no signs of repentance were manifested, 
the whole sinful race should be destroyed by a flood of 
waters ; he alone and his family escaping from the 
calamity. 

2. That man's destruction should also involve the 
destruction of every living thing; save only such as, 
by God's command, were to be preserved with Noah. 

3. That also at God's command Noah prepared an 
Ark, to serve as a floating receptacle for all that were 

* Colenso on the Pentateuch, part I., preface. 



20 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



to be saved: tlie construction of which Ark advanced by 
very slow degrees, occupying very nearly tbe whole of 
the 120 years which God had resolved to wait; and 
beyond which His forbearance was not to extend. "His 
long-suffering waited while the Ark was preparing/' 

4. That seven days after the Ark had received the 
animals — " of all flesh, fowls after their kind, cattle 
after their kind, and every creeping thing of the earth 
after his kind" — and Noah and his family had entered 
in, "the waters of the flood were upon the earth" on 
which the Ark had hitherto rested. "And ram was 
upon the earth forty days and forty nights;" at the end 
of which time the waters had sufficient depth to float 
the Ark. 

5. That " the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the 
earth; and all the high* hills that were under the whole 
heaven were covered, and all flesh died that moved 
upon the earth." 

6. That after the space of 150 days, the waters 
ceased to rise ; and finally, at the end of about one 
year, the Ark having rested on the mountains of Ararat, 
its living freight went "forth of" it, and found an 
abode upon the present regions of Armenia. 

Such are the principal events recorded in what Dr. 
Colenso is pleased to call " The Mosaic Story of the 
Flood" ; and in reference to which he says — " I knew 
for certain, on geological grounds, that a Universal 
Deluge, such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, could 
not possibly have taken place in the way described in 
the Book of Genesis." 



DR. COLENSo's GROUNDS OF OBJECTION. 



21 



This statement of the " grounds " on which the writer 
« knew for certain " that the Deluge was impossible, is 
simply ludicrous ; and it is strange that his eagerness 
to throw discredit upon the Bible should have been so 
absorbing as to have rendered him insensible to the 
imprudence of such a course. There is another event, 
recorded in a still earlier chapter of the Book of 
Genesis — the first chapter — by examining which, on 
similar grounds, his extended knowledge of another 
science may qualify him to say — " I knew for certain, 
on phijsiological grounds, that the formation of a man, 
such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, could not pos- 
sibly have taken place in the way described/' The 
geological grounds in the one case, and the physiolo- 
gical grounds in the other, supply equally secure bases 
for the knowledge founded upon them. How is it that 
the author did not see that "the way described" 
(words which he certainly ought to have omitted alto- 
gether) expressly excludes the geology as much as it 
does the physiology ? 

If the Bible had declared that nature alone had 
produced the Deluge, Dr. Colenso's geological objec- 
tions might have been entitled to some attention : but 
it declares the direct contrary. "Behold / even I 
do bring a flood of waters : " — not Nature, but / The 
Lord. " The way described " is God's way; and yet, 
. according to the language of Dr. Colenso, the Deluge 
could not possibly have taken place in the way 
described; so that not only is the "Mosaic Story" a 



22 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



myth, but an Omnipotent Being is also a myth !~ x ~ The 
statement is not that the Almighty did not " bring a 
flood of waters/' but that He could not do so : — the 
occurrence was impossible. And leaving the question 
as to whether "the Mosaic Story" is a true story or 
merely a romance, entirely out of consideration, — or 
even admitting it to be the latter, — what authority, we 
would ask, has any man for confidently asserting that 
the bringing a flood of waters, such as the romance 
" describes," was a thing impossible with God ? The 
authority appealed to is of a purely negative cha- 
racter : — it seems that geologists cannot find any 
positive evidence sufficiently conclusive to them, of 
such an occurrence : — they cannot discover in the 
framework of the earth any traces of the Deluge of 
Noah. But neither, we presume, could a physiologist 
have discovered, in Adam's framework, any traces of 
the original dust out of which he was made. The non- 
discovery of a thing can never prove even its present 
non-existence, much less can the non-discovery of 
traces of a bygone event prove that that event never 
occurred. Such traces may actually come under our 

* One would expect that a writer who expends nearly all his strength 
in mere verbal criticism would be a little more guarded than Dr. Colenso 
is in his own phraseology. What does he mean by the way described 1 ? 
The only thing described in the stoiy is the event itself, with its destruc- 
tive consequences : there is no description at all of the way in which the 
results were produced. Dr. Colenso describes a way, so imagined, of 
course, as to falsify the narrative. The present writer describes also a 
way, very different from his, which tends to verify the narrative. If 
no other ways can be conceived, then it remains for the reader to deter- 
mine which of the two was the way. 



A SUCCESSION OF DELUGES 



23 



notice, without our being able to recognize them as 
such : — we may, indeed, refer tliem to events Avidely 
different. It is no uncommon thing, in the history of 
physical research, for philosophers to attribute effects 
to wrong causes : and this, be it remembered, they are 
always sure to do whenever the real causes are either 
wholly or in part supernatural. 

Geologists contend that a succession of deluges have 
overwhelmed the earth; that it has been submerged 
over and over again; and Dr. Colenso gives unhesi- 
tating assent to their doctrines. Continents have 
sunk down and become sea-beds, and sea-beds have 
uprisen and become continents : on what valid prin- 
ciple can it be denied that a similar interchange of 
land and sea-bed took place, as the Bible informs us 
it did, 4,000 or 5,000 years ago ?* And as for geolo- 
gical indications now of such an event, they ought 
never to have been expected. Moreover, if physical 
science alone were adequate to account for the phe- 
nomenon of the Deluge, then although the fact might 
be admitted, yet the narrative which declares the agent 
to have been not Nature but God— that the event was 

* The Hebrew chronology is acknowledged, by the ablest Biblical 
scholars, to be unsettled and uncertain : the Deluge may have occurred 
even more than 5,000 years ago. If the conclusions recently arrived 
at, respecting the great antiquity of certain hieroglyphic Egyptian 
monuments, by Hincks, Rawlinson, and others, be correct, the epoch of 
the Deluge may be as remote as here stated. But, whatever anachron- 
isms really exist in modem versions, they have nothing to do with the 
subject of the present Essay, which is wholly concerned with the possi- 
bility of the event itself, irrespective of the date of its occurrence.— 
(See the article Chronology, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bibk.) 



24 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



not a physical necessity, but a supernatural appoint 
ment, would be rejected. A phenomenon which is the 
necessary consequence of physical law, takes place 
quite independently of immediate supernatural agency. 
The pretended Divine declaration — " behold / even I 
do bring a flood of waters/' would be regarded — and 
justly regarded, as a fable; or at least, as a mere 
human conjecture; — not as to the fact itself, but as to 
the agency which produced it : — the writer either igno- 
rantly, or as a pious frauds attributing to the direct 
act of God; an event with which directly God had 
nothing to do. But is this the way in which a Divine 
Record — or a Record only declared to be Divine, — is to 
be disposed of? If the event is explicable solely by 
reference to the laws of Nature, supernatural power 
could have been exercised only to prevent it, not to 
produce it : if it be not explicable on physical principles 
alone, it could not have occurred ! 

It is not here denied, however, that physical agencies 
were the secondary means employed by the Deity to 
produce the Deluge : we hold that these means were 
employed. But that, independently of the super- 
natural Power that constrained them to do His 
bidding, they could not have operated "in the way 
described i" their operation was not spontaneous, but 
commanded. The end was not coerced and necessitated 
by the uncontrolled means ; but the means themselves 
were directed and subordinated to the pre-determined 
end. 

We quote another remarkable statement in reference 



W VS V PARTIAL DELUGE IMPOSSIBLE ? 25 

f 

to tliis matter from Dr. Colenso's book : — " I am well 
aware that some have attempted to show that Noah's 
Deluge was only a partial one. But such attempts 
have ever seemed to me to be made in the very teeth 
of Scripture statements, which are as plain and explicit 
as words can possibly be. Nor is anything really 
gained by supposing the Deluge to have been partial. 
For, as waters must find their own level on the earth's 
surface, without a special miracle, of which the Bible 
says nothing, a flood, which should begin by covering 
the top of Ararat (if that were conceivable) or a much 
lower mountain, must necessarily become universal, 
and in due time sweep over the hills of Auvergne." 
Must it? Why ? "A flood, which should begin by 
covering the top of Ararat/' could not be a natural 
phenomenon, — the supposition implies supernatural 
agency; so that, according to this dictum, though 
supernatural power could raise up this mountain of 
water it could not maintain it there. Nature, dormant 
(during the operation, must awake up, upon the com- 
pletion of the work, drive away the invader of its 
territory, and forthwith pull clown Avhat he had built 
up ! 

But we would ask :— Is this the way that the geolo- 
gical deluges alluded to above, commenced and swept 
along: — did they begin by covering high mountains, 
and thence in due time sweep over lower hills ? The 
author must know that this revival of the long-exploded 
way of producing a deluge — whether partial or univer- 
sal, would be repudiated now by everybody, whether 



26 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



advanced as a dogma of geology, or as a gloss upon 
Scripture. And he knows full well that a partial 
deluge might be most satisfactorily accounted for, 
without the waters beginning to cover mountains at 
all. He knows that every deluge whether partial or 
universal, that has ever occurred (if indeed there have 
been more than one on an extensive scale), has been 
brought about either by the elevation of the sea-bed, 
or by the subsidence of the land, or by both of these 
conjointly. And we cannot but regard his hypothesis 
of " a flood which should begin by covering the top of 
Ararat/" as a very reprehensible attempt to throw 
dust — or rather water — in the eyes of the unthinking 
multitude.* 

In fact, in speaking of the devastations of the IFlood, 

* We quote the following for what it is worth. It is given in the 
Times of March 1, 1864. without any comment : — ■ 

" A German skipper, Captain Hilmacher, who had passed many years 
of his life in those parts, and knew every shoal and sandbank within 
100 miles of the Chinese coast, suddenly, about 20 years ago, dis- 
covered an island which he was perfectly certain did not exist on that 
spot before. He took his soundings, determined the latitude and 
longitude, sailed all round it, and found that it was from 12 to 
13 miles in length and breadth. There were several springs of 
fresh water in it. and it consisted of the richest pasture-ground imagi- 
nable. Captain Hilmacher instantly returned to Europe, recruited a 
number of German emigrants, bought all kinds of seeds, agricultural 
implements, poultry, and cattle, set out again for this new El Dorado, 
and in a couple of years there might be seen on the desert island a flour- 
ishing village, fields waving with com, meadows peopled with oxen, 
goats, and sheep ; everything, in short, that might constitute a thriving 
colony. This happy state of things lasted about five years, when a 
British merchant vessel unexpectedly made its appearance. The cap- 
tain and crew expressed their astonishment at finding a European com- 
munity in such an out-of-the-way place ; entered into amicable inter- 



MOUNTAINS NEVER FLOODED BY THE DELUGE. 



27 



the mountains of Ararat and the hills of Auvergne 
ought never to have been mentioned : these were not 
flooded at all : they were in reality imflooded, like 
! every other portion of the present "new earth/' 
I Geology alone would have informed the objector that 
immediately before the last of the alleged numerous 
deluges and upheavals in the regions referred to, these 
mountains and hills, as such, were not in existence — 
they were at the bottom of the sea; and the Bible 
| distinctly declares that "the world that then was-, 
being overflowed with water, perished. But the 
heavens and the earth which noiv are, by the same 
word are kept in store reserved unto fire." (2 Peter, 
iii, 6, 7.) 

The Ark rested upon the earth that now is, and not 
upon that which, as earth, or dry land, perished, and 
became the sea-bed : this would have been impossible. 

course with the colonists, and gave them brandy in exchange for their 
produce. This unfortunate circumstance proved the ruin of the colony : 
drunkenness grew into a habit, insubordination was the consequence, and 
one fine day poor Captain Hilmaeher, who had hitherto ruled his little 
kingdom with great wisdom, was obliged to make his escape in a boat to 
avoid being murdered. He succeeded in reaching a vessel, which took 
him home again. There he easily obtained the command of a ship, 
which he took care to provide with plenty of arms, for the purpose of 
punishing his unruly subjects, and make them repent of their ingrati- 
tude. He set sail, but on arriving within the latitude where his island 
had once existed, he was astonished to find the place empty; not a 
vestige of land was to be seen : the island had gone as it had come. 
Had the catastrophe occurred so suddenly as to preclude the possibility 
of escape ? Tins is what Captain Hilmaeher never learnt."— GaU<jnun'Cs 
Messenger. 

The above, whether true or not, is a facsimile, on a small scale, of the 
Xoachian Deluge. 



.28 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



Painters and poets, as also some divines, are prone 
to depict tlie Deluge as a sudden and tumultuous rush 
of mighty Maters over the entire globe. But the 
Record gives not the least countenance to the supposi- 
tion of this universal tumult. We have more reason 
to conclude that the progress of the Deluge, like that 
of the building of the Ark, was slow and gradual — 
occupying nearly the same extent of duration, namely, 
120 years : — that the movement commenced about the 
time the building of the Ark commenced — the far dis- 
tant lands (if there Mere any) slowly descending, and 
the sea-beds slowly rising : — that these movements, 
unperceived by the remote human inhabitants of the 
earth, continued till all the regions, unpeopled by man 
had become gradually submerged ; and that then the 
inundation spread to the shores of the region (wher- 
ever that was) over which the antediluvian population 
was distributed. "They were eating and drinking, 
marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noe entered into the Ark, and knew not until the flood 
came, and took them all away." 

We have not the slightest ground for inferring from 
anything in " the Mosaic Story/' that more than one 
continuous region of the old earth was inhabited by 
man during the antediluvian ages ; that there was any 
emigration to distant islands or continents; or that 
■communities were wafted across seas in ships, and 
formed distinct colonies. No mention is made of any 
transport by ships, or even of the existence of ships, 
-anterior to the ark ; and consequently we have no 



CONCLUSIONS DEDUCIBLE FROM THE NARRATIVE. 29 



right whatever to assume that any such transport — 
which without ships would have been physically impos- 
sible — ever took place before the Flood. There are 
declarations, plain enough, about tilling the ground, 
but not the remotest intimation of ploughing the sea. 

Disregarding, then, all such gratuitous assumptions, 
and rejecting equally the unwarrantable interpolations 
which the imaginings of objectors have added to the 
text of the story, and adhering strictly to the scriptural 
version of it, we deduce the following conclusions : — 

1. That the destruction of the human race by a flood 
of waters was- threatened by God, and communicated 
to Noah, 120 years before that destruction actually 
took place ; and that, by the same Divine command, 

5 the building of the Ark proceeded pari passu with the 
slow advance of the impending calamity towards the 
shores of the region occupied by Noah and the rest of 
the human family. 

2. That it commenced contemporaneously with the 
commencement of the Ark,, by the slow but continuous 
subsidence of whatever remote lands were then in ex- 
istence, all of which perished by the overflowing of the 
waters : this original land, when the subsidence had 

! ceased, becoming the bed of the superincumbent sea. 
[The gradual rising of the new earth would expedite 
these partial deluges ; and thus is removed the diffi- 
culty some have felt in finding water enough for the 
Flood. These subsidences and upheavals are no other 
than geologists generally feel themselves compelled to 
assume, on what they regard as scientific grounds to 



30 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



account for certain geological phenomena. What in 
geology is described as upheavals of sea-beds, being in 
Scripture characterised as the breaking up of the foun- 
tains of the great deep.] 

3. That these successive subsidences and upheavals 
gradually approached nearer and nearer to the region 
inhabited by man ; till, at length, towards the close of 
the 120 years, and seven days after Noah and those he 
was commanded to take with him, had entered the Ark, 
the waters of the Flood were upon the earth — the only 
dry land with which, it is very likely, the inhabitants 
of it were acquainted. " The same day* were all the 
fountains of the great deep broken up." Till that day, 
all were not broken up : — the human world, "the world 
of the ungodly," reserved to the last, had yet to be 
destroyed (2 Peter, ii. 5.) [The words of St. Peter 
may, however, imply that the same day the last of the 
several upheavals commenced.] 

4. That the Deluge, having for its special object the 
punishment and destruction of a wicked and rebellious 
people, the wrath of an offended Deity was now more 
signally manifested: for no sooner had Noah and his 
family, with the animals to be preserved been safely 
housed, than the final breaking up and subsidence took 
place, accompanied by unremitting torrents of rain for 
" forty days and forty nights f the first upheaval which 
appeared above the surface of the waters being pro- 
bably the land of Armenia ; and on the rising mountains 
of Ararat, in this new land, " in the seventh month, 
on the seventeenth day of the month/'' the Ark rested. 



ARARAT LOWER WHEN THE ARK RESTED THEREON. 31 

And ultimately (after about a year's abode in it) "the 
face of the ground" was sufficiently dried for Noah 
and the other occupants to leave the Ark and betake 
themselves to the new earth thus provided. 

There is no reason whatever to suppose that the 
mountains of Ararat, at their first contact with the 
bottom of the Ark, had anything like the same eleva- 
tion as at present. This contact doubtless took place 
during the slow progress of upheaval, the gradual ex- 
posure of the new land having been more the conse- 
quence of the continuous emergence of it from the 
waters than of the retiring or sinking of the waters 
themselves. 

The upper regions of Ararat, now so elevated, and 
so covered, to an extent of 3,000 feet from the summit 
with perpetual snow, may then not have attained to 
anything like this altitude, and may have presented a 
most genial climate; a climate fully equal in tempera- 
ture and salubrity to that which Noah had left. It is 
preposterous to suppose that he would have been landed 
amidst a dreary waste of ice; where animal life could 
have found no means of support ; and where, without 
a special miracle, he and all that were with him must 
have been speedily frozen to death upon quitting the 
Ark. Yet this is the supposition that Dr. Colenso 
affirms the story to justify. " For," he says, "the 
story evidently supposes that the Ark rested on the 
highest mountairMummit for 73 or 74 days; since it 
says that it ( rested' on the seventeenth day of the 
seventh month and the mountain- tops were seen on 



32 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



f tke first day of the tenth month/ Now the highest 
summit of Ararat is 17,000 feet high, more than 1,000 
feet higher than Mont Blanc, and 3,000 feet above the 
region of perpetual snow — above which, according to 
the story, they must have lived from the 'seventeenth day 
of the seventh montV to the twenty-seventh day of the 

second month — for more than seven months 

But, when the waters had retired from the earth, i. e., 
for at least two months, according to the story, the air 
would scarcely have supported respiration, and living 
creatures in the Ark must have been frozen to death/' 
All this may be quite consistent with the story of 
Colenso's Flood, but it has nothing to do with that of 
Noah's Flood. The mountains of Ararat were not 
among "the high hills under the whole heaven" that 
were covered by that flood: they were among those 
that were uncovered; so that, from the present altitude 
of Ararat, no conclusion whatever can be deduced as 
to the elevation of the waters of the Deluge. This 
elevation may have been immensely short of what has 
sometimes been imagined; for the high hills that 
were covered, were covered in consequence of their 
own subsidence below the waters, not of the waters 
rising above them. 

When Dr. Colenso's attention was directed to this 
story of the Flood (and it would seem for the first 
time) , by his Zulu pupil, and when the inquiring native, 
seeking enlightenment from his intellectual superior — 
from him who had undertaken the office of his spiritual . 
instructor, looked up and asked, "Do you really believe 



NOTIONS AS TO THE FLOOD. 



33 



that all this happened — that all the beasts, and birds, 
and creeping things, upon the earth, large and small, 
from hot countries and cold, came thus in pairs, and 
entered into the Ark with Noah? And did Noah 
gather food for them all, for the beasts and birds of 
prey, as well as the rest?'' — the bishop was dumb- 
founded by the very natural, and, in the untaught 
Zulu, the very commendable and creditable inquiry. 
And instead of correcting his mistaken notions, and 
giving him a rational description of the Flood — such 
as even his geology ought to have qualified him to do — 
he says his " heart answered — shall a man speak lies 
[as of course Moses did] in the name of the Lord?"! 

It is clear that the inquiring Zulu had exercised 
more reflection on the matter than the bishop had, 
notwithstanding all the " hard thinking " for which the 
latter takes credit. The mind of the poor native was 
evidently dwelling upon the lions, and bears, and tigers, 
and crocodiles, and vultures of this present earth ; 
which is not the antediluvian earth — the earth that the 
I Bible declares was " destroyed " by the Flood ; as his 
I bishop ought to have told him. He ought to have 
told him that there is no proof — no intimation what- 
ever from Scripture, that these animals were even in 
existence in any region of what was then earth, much 
less in that particular region where the human race 
had congregated. And that even admitting they may 
have inhabited distant lands, these distant lands, and 
they with them, had been submerged before the Flood 
reached Noah's locality. Noah could not have taken 

D 



34 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

into the Ark animals that had perished before his pairs- 
had been selected : he was commanded to take only 
" of every living thing, two of every sort ; " and this 
command, be it remembered, was executed only seven 
days before the Ark itself embarked. 

And hence the fruitlessness of all speculation and 
calculation respecting the capacity of the Ark to hold 
two and sevens of every sort. The question first to be 
settled is :— How many sorts were there ? And this a 
nobody can answer : but of one thing we may be sure : — i 
that as the Lord God dictated the dimensions, there! 
vras room " enough and to spare." 

And so of Adam giving names " to all cattle, and to» : 
the fowl of the air, and every beast of the field it 
has been contended that this tedious operation would 
have consumed an enormous amount of time; and 
hence the great probability of the Day being a geoloJ 
gical period.* But how can any notion be formed of 
the time employed in naming, without any data as to 
the number of things named ? The mere fact of this 
naming having been so easily accomplished, coupled 
with the subsecment fact that pairs and sevens of al^ 
living annuals (except fishes) were accommodated hi 
the Ark, justifies the conclusion that but comparatively- 
few species of land and aerial creatures then existed* 
Nothing is said to have brought forth abundantly but 
the waters. Thorns and thistles did not appear upon 
the earth before the Fall ; and there is no reason to 
suppose that birds and beasts of prey, venemous reptiles, 

* See the note at page 51. 



NO NOXIOUS ANIMALS BEFORE TIIE DELUGE. 



35 



or noxious insects,, appeared till after the Deluge. The 
raven may have been an exception, and the only excep- 
tion, to the general exclusion of even carnivorous 
animals. Some such a voracious feeder was perhaps 
indispensable to the antediluvians, to remove the re- 
mains of animals devoted to sacrifice, and to perform 
the office of scavenger generally ; for the raven is not 
exclusively carnivorous, it is omnivorous. The Bible 
indeed distinctly enough declares that no provision 
was made on the .earth for any exclusively carnivorous 
animals at all ; and therefore that such could not have 
been among the antediluvian creations : — " To every 
beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to 
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth 
wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for 
meat/' So that, notwithstanding the foregoing con- 
jecture, as to the office of the raven, its natural food 
was not flesh ; at least, flesh Avas not indispensable to 
its support. The text just quoted distinctly declares 
that every green herb with which the earth was clothed, 
was suitable for food for creature. Nothing noxious 
or hurtful to man or beast was to be found in any part 
of the supply which God pronounced to be " very 
good/' There could have been no medicinal plants 
even, much less poisonous weeds and shrubs : these 
were the significant aftergrowths of a banned and 
blighted soil ; and not the blessed productions, in re- 
ference to which it is recorded that — C( God saw every- 
thing that he had made, and behold it was very good/' 
In the second part of his work, Dr. Colenso asks — 



36 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



what however he seems to regard as a most unneces- 
sary question— " Do even the bishops and doctors 
of our Church believe the Scripture account of the 
Deluge ? I assert, without fear of contradiction, that 
there are multitudes of the more intelligent clergy, 
who do not believe in the reality of the Noachian 
Deluge as described in the Book of Genesis n ! He 
says that if anyone, " without any appeal to science at 
all, only allows himself to think upon the subject, and 
to realize to his own mind the necessary conditions of 
the supposed event, he will need only a common prac- 
tical judgment to convince him that the story told in 
the Book of Genesis is utterly incredible, which in- 
volves the necessity of Noah taking in a supply of 
animals, or of animal food, for the special use of the car- 
nivorous beasts and birds, and of Noah and his family 
taking round two or three times a day food and water to 
such a multitude of animals, supplying them daily with 
fresh litter (how stored and kept ?) and removing the 
old, with other considerations of the same kind." 

Now we would ask : — What antediluvian work on 
Natural History was it that furnished the writer with 
his knowledge of the antediluvian Fauna ? How came 
he to know that there was "such a multitude of animals" 
in existence — that there were any carnivorous beasts 
and birds, save the raven, at most ? No post-diluvian 
author could have supplied such information : the facts 
can be gathered from no other book but the Bible ; 
and anyone of " a common practical judgment" must 
see that if pairs of all the then existing tribes were 



THE BISHOP'S ANTEDILUVIAN GEOGRAPHY. 



37 



taken into the Ark, these tribes could not have been so 
numerous as to render the operation impracticable. Dr. 
Colenso, however, first assumes that there was more than 
an ark-full of pairs, and then concludes that u the story 
is utterly incredible," because the Ark could not hold 
them ! Why, for aught he can shew to the contrary, 
the whole of the beasts and birds then in existence 
might not have been sufficient to have supplied pairs 
and sevens to stock even a very moderate English 
farm : — the individuals may have been very numerous, 
and the differing species very few. Unless he can 
prove the case to have been otherwise, his remarks are 
as futile as his data are " unhistorical." 

And the same may be said of his other assumption 
of " hot countries and cold." How does he know that 
there ivere actually hot countries and cold in existence 
to supply his imaginary birds and beasts ? He writes 
as if he were in possession of a map of the antediluvian 
world ; whereas all is pure fancy and unfounded specu- 
lation. Why should it not be literally true that " the 
waters were collected into one place ; " and that the 
first dry land was but one continuous and genial region 
— neither hot nor cold? In the present Essay, we 
have conceded to objectors their assumed position that 
there were diversities of country and climate ; but this 
concession is made simply because the argument is 
equally conclusive, whether it be yielded or withheld. 
If the dry land consisted of but one continuous region, 
then, however many upheavals there may have been, 
forming the new earth, there was but one subsidence. 



38 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



destroying the old one — " the world of the ungodly." 
No human being can possibly knoiv anything about the | 
configuration of the earth's surface at the time when I 
Adam and Eve trod the Garden of Eden. How can \ 
any man do more than merely conjecture as to the 1 
mape and extent of what has utterly perished,, and of 
which no recorded description exists ? But it is plain 
that his Zulu friend has inoculated the Doctor with his ] 
own crude notions; though it is certainly extraor- } 
dinary — when so taken aback by this inquisitive gentle- | 
man's interrogatories, that even his " own knowledge I 
of geology, which had been much increased since he i 
left England/' should have so signally deserted him, 
instead of coming to his rescue ; for the most super- 
ficial acquaintance only with that subject would have 
suggested to him hints in abundance about upheavals 
arid subsidences — successive destructions of animal life, 
and successive creations. Einding himself bewildered 
by such unexpected queries, and feeling his own im- 
perfect acquaintance with " the story/'' why did not he 
go at once to his book-shelves and consult Josephus ; 
or even quietly retire, and look more carefully into his 
own Bible? Why did he not show the mistaken 
Zulu, from that Bible, that the earth he was thinking 
of is not the earth that the Elood destroyed ? He was 
evidently not taking into consideration the destruction 
of the antediluvian earth at all ; only of the creatures 
upon it, which he imagined to have been as numerous 
and as varied as its present inhabitants ; and that the 
Deluge simply swept them from its surface. He, as 



THE EARTH DESTROYED WITH THOSE UPON IT. 39 



well as his teacher, had overlooked the thirteenth verse 
■of the sixth chapter of Genesis, where, " according to 
the story/' it is declared that " God said unto Noah, 
The end of all flesh is come before me ; for the earth is 
filled with violence through them ; and behold I will 
destroy them with the earth." And if his disciple- 
pointing to the marginal reading — had insisted that 
this must mean from the earth, he should have at once 
undeceived him, by turning to the eleventh verse of the 
ninth chapter, and showing him these words : u And I 
will establish my covenant with you ; neither shall all 
flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood, 
neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the 
earth" And if these references had proved insufficient, 
the scrupulous and pertinacious Zulu might have had 
his attention directed to the inspired language of St. 
Peter. " By the word of God, the heavens were of old, 
and the earth standing out of the water and in the 
water, whereby the world that then was, being over- 
flowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the 
earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in 
store reserved unto fire against the day of judgment 
and perdition of ungodly men/' (2 Peter, chap. iii. 
v. 5—7.) The plain meaning of which is— in so far as 
the earth is concerned— that the dry land, which was 
made to appear on the third of the Six Days, was made 
to disappear at the Deluge; and that the dry land, 
that is now, was then made to appear instead. As to 
<c the heaven which is now/' we shall offer some obser- 
vations hereafter. 



40 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



Alluding to the " other difficulties which the story 
contains/' Dr. Colenso says — " I refer especially to the 
circumstance, well known to all geologists, (see LyelFs 
Elementary Geology, p. 197, 198) that volcanic hills 
exist of immense extent in Auvergne and Languedoc, 
which must have been formed ages before the Noachian 
Deluge, and which are covered with light and loose 
substances, pumice-stone, &c, that must have been 
swept away by a flood, but do not exhibit the slightest 
sign of having ever been so disturbed."" 

Now where is to be found the indisputable proof 
that these hills " must have been formed ages before 
the Noachian Deluge ? " And as to their not exhibiting 
the slightest sign of a flood having swept over them, 
we ask — How should they ? The flood never swept 
over them at all. And the objector actually, though 
unwittingly, proves, as far as the facts adverted to can 
prove, that the loose covering of the hills in question 
cannot be of such remote formation as he previously 
assumes it to be. He does not perceive that the un- 
disturbed condition of the "light and loose substances 33 
with which the hills of Auvergne are covered, exposed 
as they have been ever since their formation, to the 
denuding effects of wind, and rain, and frost, is an 
argument which tells directly against the hypothesis of 
their vast age, instead of for it. The age claimed for 
these hills is 18,000 years at least. Kalisch, whom 
Dr. Colenso so often refers to as an authority for his 
statements, says, in reference to the districts alluded 
to, " That extraordinary region contains rocks, con- 



miller's hypothesis of a partial deluge. 41 

sisting of laminated formations of siliceous deposits ; 
one of the rocks is 60 feet in thickness; and a 
moderate calculation shows, that at least 18,000 years 
were required to produce that single pile. All these 
formations, therefore, are far more remote than the 
date of the Noachian flood ; they show not the slightest 
trace of having been affected or disturbed by any 
general deluge; their progress has been slow, but 
uninterrupted ; even the pumice-stone, and other loose 
and light substances, with which many of those hills 
and the cones of the volcanic craters are covered, and 
which would have been washed away by the action of a 
flood, have remained entirely untouched;" and that 
too, after so many thousands of years' exposure to all 
the vicissitudes of weather, hail, and storm, and tem- 
pest ! Now without dwelling upon the inconsistency 
of the permanent coherence and fixedness of these 
loose and light substances, we would ask — what has the 
age of the " laminated formations of siliceous deposits," 
of which the rocks consist, to do with the time when 
these laminated rocks last appeared above water ? 

Hugh Miller, who in his Testimony of the Rocks 
adopts the hypothesis of a partial deluge, also adverts 
to these hills of Auvergne ; and Dr. Colenso quotes 
the remarks as if the author supported him : — " The 
cones of volcanic craters are formed of loose incoherent 
scoriae and ashes ; and when exposed as in the case of 
submarine volcanoes, such as Graham's Island and the 
Island of Sabrina, to the denuding force of waves and 
currents, they have in a few weeks, or at most a few 



4.2 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



months, been washed completely away. And yet, in 
various parts of the world, such as Auvergne in central 
France, and along the flanks of ./Etna, there are cones 
of long extinct or long slumbering volcanoes, which, 
though of at least triple the antiquity of the Noachian 
Deluge, and though composed of the ordinary incoherent 
materials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According 
to the calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating 
flood could have passed over the forest zone of ./Etna 
during the last twelve thousand years, — for such is the 
antiquity which he assigns to its older lateral cones, 
that retain in integrity their original shape ; and the 
volcanic cones of Auvergne, which enclose in their 
ashes the remains of extinct animals, and present an 
outline as perfect as those of JEtna, are deemed older 
still. Graham Island arose out of the sea early in 
July, 1831 ; in the beginning of the following August 
it had attained to a circumference of three miles, and 
to a height of two hundred feet ; and yet in less than 
three months from that time the waves had washed its 
immense mass down to the sea-level; and in a few 
weeks more it existed but as a dangerous shoal. And 
such, inevitably, would have been the fate of the 
.equally incoherent cone-like craters of ./Etna and 
Auvergne, during the seven and a half months that 
intervened between the breaking up of the fountains of 
the great deep and the re-appearance of the mountain- 
tops, had they been included within the area of the 
Deluge." 

Here the stress of the argument (against a universal 



APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF ISLANDS. 43 



deluge) is laid— not as with Kaliscli— upon the length 
of time required for the production of the laminated 
formations — but upon the reasonable affirmation that 
the incoherent matter composing the cones of the 
mountains in question would have been carried away 
by the ocean-tumult before the re-appearance of their 
tops above the water. But there need have been no 
tumult at all ; the ascent of the new land may have 
been, and we believe was, slow and tranquil. We have 
no right to suppose that the surface of the sea, at the 
time of this re-appearance, was stormy, any more than 
that it was perfectly calm ; and the slow rising of a 
large extent of land would have the effect of quieting 
whatever central disturbance there may have been 
above. And as to Graham's Island, it may not have 
disappeared — we submit it did not disappear, by being 
rapidly washed away by the denuding force of waves 
and currents. We here quote the latest information 
respecting this erratic island : — 

"Since the 28th of June, 1831, an island, successively 
graced with the names of Ferdinand, Graham, Hotham, 
Nerita, and Julia, has several times appeared and dis- 
appeared off Palermo, and is now on the point of 
getting above water again .... nor is this the only 
instance of the kind on record. In the neighbourhood 
of the Philippine Islands, and on other points of the 
Chinese waters, small islands occasionally rise and 
make their exit again, without attracting much notice/' 
—The Times, March 1, 1864. It is as likely that these 
islands sink bodily, as that they rise bodily. 



44 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



It may readily be conceded that no lithological 
vestiges or signs, conclusive of the Noachian Deluge, 
are to be fonnd in any region of the earth. If " the 
Mosaic story " be a true story, such vestiges or signs 
of what has disappeared cannot exist on this present 
earth. The reason why they do not exist is similar to 
the reason why no signs of the great earthquake at 
Lisbon in the year 1755, exist in the structures of the 
present city — the new Lisbon : the signs disappeared 
with that on which they were impressed. 

But although there can be no lithological evidence of 
the Noachian Deluge, yet the animal remains some- 
times found in situations which geologists are so 
puzzled to account for, might, if their real history 
could be traced, abundantly confirm the truth of the 
Record. It was the inhabited region of the ante- 
diluvian world that was exclusively the scene of sudden 
tumult — of swift and terrific destruction. The rain, 
pouring down for forty days and forty nights with un- 
exampled fury, would alone beat away the upper soil, 
invade the caves and burial places, expose and liberate, 
and cast adrift human corpses, and human fabrications 
of even then ancient date. Bodies, too, of the drowned 
population would float away in all directions ; and 
fragments of these, after mutilation by voracious in- 
habitants of the deep, would be very likely to find a 
lodgment in the fissures and dislocations of the 
" broken up " land, in its gradual ascent to the sur- 
face. These lithological fractures in the upheaving 
masses, being produced under Mater, and the parts 



WERE THE UPHEAVALS NECESSARILY VERTICAL? 45 

again uniting under water, the consolidated mass 
would rise to the light of day a mighty tomb; in 
which a few stray remnants of humanity would have 
invaded the long closed-up sepulchres of animals that 
had once roamed the forests of the pre- Adamite earth ; 
and thus the bones of creatures that had existed at 
widely distant epochs, would be found intermingled 
in one common depository; in situations where the 
animals themselves could never have lived together, 
nor have died together; and whose remains could 
have come into juxtaposition only in consequence of 
some widely spread catastrophe. And it is still more 
likely that, in the extensive " breaking up " of sea- 
beds to form the present " new earth/' huge fragments 
of the rising masses, with all their fossil contents, 
would have detached themselves and drifted away ; 
some to sink again to the bottom, and others, of 
lighter material — lighter in the aggregate, meeting 
with fresh uprising land, would become united to it, 
and borne up with it. In fact, from an upheaving 
continent a large amount of loosened matter may be 
expected to fall off and drift away in all directions. 

We have here been referring to what may be re- 
garded as mere casualties, or accidental concomitants 
of the several upheavals. But why should these up- 
heavals themselves be considered as uniformly pro- 
ceeding in a vertical direction ? All we know is that 
there were very general displacements and rearrange- 
ments of matter ; and, bearing in mind the directing 
agency, why may not some of these have implied 



46 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



lateral movements of the rising masses, causing the 
remains embedded in them to be transported to lati- 
tudes where we might little expect to find them ? 

And in fact, there is a natural tendency to lateral 
motion in every uprising portion of land. A mass of 
matter whose upper surface forms an ocean bed, ro- 
tates from west to east with a slower velocity than the 
superincumbent waters vertically over it, and is thus 
to some extent preceded by those waters more and 
more as the mass ascends (unless it be sufficiently 
rigid throughout to bear the strain) ; the tendency to 
lateral displacement increasing as the original depth 
is greater. And this physical truth, we believe hitherto 
overlooked, is worthy of consideration by geologists in 
connection with the doctrine of the elevation of granite, 
in a state of fluidity or semi-fluidity, from the sup- 
posed molten nucleus of the earth, to form the 1111- 
stratified rocks. Such molten matter would con- 
tinually tend more and more to spread itself laterally 
as it rises ; and on emerging above the water, there 
being then less resistance to this tendency, we might 
expect the incipient granite to overflow its stratified 
envelope, and spread over it in a westerly direction. 

No doubt, formerly, remains of the Noachian Deluge 
were regarded as being abundant all over the present 
earth. But this supposition arose out of the now 
exploded doctrine which taught that a deluge operated, 
of necessity, by means of oceans of water sweeping 
over the mountains (they themselves still remaining 
in situ), and then, after a universal destruction of life, 



SCIENCE MISREPRESENTED TO OPPOSE SCRIPTURE. 47 

retiring to their former beds, leaving ample vestiges of 
that destruction behind. But any modern writer, pro- 
fessing to be acquainted with, and giving his assent to, 
the principles of modern geology, who talks about 
existing mountain summits having been " swept by a 
Flood/'' cannot but do so for the purpose of misleading 
those whom he addresses. He must know that he is 
entirely misrepresenting the modus operandi of the 
catastrophe, opposing equally the conclusions of science, 
and the declarations of Scripture. 

All modern geologists agree that every part of the 
present dry land uprose from the waters, in fact, their 
doctrine is, that it has risen and sunk several times. 
They call certain of these movements geological " con- 
vulsions ; " and although it is considered that they 
were, in general, of but comparatively brief duration, 
yet that many ages of tranquillity intervened between 
every consecutive two. The upheavals which took 
place during the Deluge of Noah were gradual, 
extending over a period of ( 120 years. Indeed, 
these may not all have ceased — may not any of 
them have ceased, till long after the landing of the Ark. 
Let us suppose that what are now the summits of the 
mountains of Ararat, of the hills of Auvergne, or of any 
other existing mountains, before their final upheaval 
commenced, were so much as 3,000 feet below the sur- 
face of the superincumbent sea ; and that their gradual 
ascent, till they appeared above that surface, occupied 
only 100 out of the 120 years ; the rate of ascent 
vertically would have been less than an inch per day of 



48 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



twenty-four hours — a degree of progress too slow to 
have sensibly disturbed those " light and loose sub- 
stances" upon which more than 4,000 years — nay, 
according to the dictum of certain geologists, more 
than 18,000 years — of exposure to atmospheric in- 
fluences is declared to have had little or no effect.* 

"We may notice, in conclusion, the objections ad- 
vanced by Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the 
Rocks, to the universality of Noah's Deluge. 

As already mentioned, Mr. Miller considers the 
Flood to have been only partial, and to have been con 
fined within a radius of a few hundred miles around 
the dwelling-place of Noah ; and, after descanting 
upon the vast extent of animal life of the present and 
pre-Adamite creation, asks, " How are such facts re- 
concileable with an universal deluge ? " And he adds, 
" Had it been universal, it would either have broken up 
all the diverse centres, and substituted one great 
general centre instead — that in which the Ark rested i 
or else, at an enormous expense of miracle, all the 
animals preserved by natural means by Noah would 
have had to be returned by supernatural means to the 
regions whence, by means equally supernatural, they 
had been brought. The sloths and armadilioes — little 
fitted by nature for long journeys — would have required 
to be ferried across the Atlantic to regions in which, 

* The external covering, the last coating of pumice-stone, &c., may 
have been, and we have no doubt was, never under water at all : this and 
similar incoherent matter was most likely ejected centuries after the 
Deluge. Let the contrary be proved if it can. not assumed. 



ARGUMENTS FOR A PARTIAL DELUGE INADMISSIBLE. 49 

the remains of the megatherium and glyptodon lie 
entombed ; the kangaroo and wombat to the insulated 
continent that contains the bones of extinct macropus 
and phascolomys ; and the New Zealand birds, in- 
cluding its heavy -flying quails, and its wingless wood- 
hen, to those remote islands of the Pacific in which the 
skeletons of the Palapteryx ingens and Dinornis 
piganteus lie entombed." — Testimony of the Rocks, 
p. 304. 

But in all this it is taken for granted that the animals 
here alluded to existed in Noah's time, though the 
beasts and birds and creeping things, supplied during 
the six days, need not have been anything like so 
abundant as the creatures which existed either before 
Adam or after the Flood. 

If any one, after reading what has now been sub- 
mitted to his consideration, still thinks that the general 
Deluge, instead of taking place gradually and in detail, 
was as sudden everywhere as in the land of the un- 
godly, we would invite his careful attention to the lan- 
guage of the seventh and seventeenth verses of the sixth 
chapter of Genesis. In the first of these it is said, " I 
will destroy man whom I have created from the face 
of the earth ; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, 
an4 the fowls of the air ; " clearly implying a threat of 
future vengeance. But no sooner are the necessary 
directions given to Noah about the construc- 
tion of the Ark, than God says (v. 17), "And 
behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the 

E 



50 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



earth ; " evidently indicating a present act, and that at 
the commencement of the 120 years. 

u The Mosaic Story of the Flood " is thus seen to be 
entirely free from those impossibilities and incon- 
sistencies which Bishop Colenso would fasten upon it. 
And although physical nature alone could not have 
produced the phenomenon any more than physical 
nature alone can manufacture gunpowder, yet no 
violation of physical laws took place. The same 
agencies of nature — which, within historic times, have 
caused old lands to sink down and new lands to rise 
up — directed by the Almighty Will, in a way adequate 
as means to the accomplishment of His purposes, were 
all that, in His hands, were necessary to bring about 
the extensive results we have been contemplating. 
" Impossibilities and inconsistencies " there are none. 
There is no impossibility in the submerging of the old 
earth and the uprising of the new ; there is no incon- 
sistency in sheltering specimens from every species of 
the then animal kingdom in the Ark, and supplying 
them for a year with food and litter. There are no 
grounds whatever for affirming the narrative to be 
(C unhistorical " — a mere Hebrew fable or romance. 
Dr. Colenso' s immediate predecessors in the work of 
Bible-defamation signally failed in their attempts to 
prove Moses " a Hebrew Descartes, or an early Coper- 
nicus and he has failed — even more signally failed — 
in his endeavours to prove him a Hebrew Dean Swift, 
or an early Defoe. 



adam's naming the beasts and birds. 51 
Note. 

It was observed at page 31, that the naming by Adam, 
in one day, of the beasts of the field, and the fowl of 
the air, has been adduced in proof of the lengthened 
period of time implied in the word " Day ; " as twenty- 
four hours would have been very insufficient for the 
operation. Dr. McCausland expresses himself in refer- 
ence to this matter as follows : — 

" It would have been a physical impossibility, not to 
be accounted for by a suggested miracle, that a being 
of human mould could have surveyed with his eves, 
comprehended with his mind, and named with mortal 
tongue, all the beasts of the field, and birds of the air, 
•or even a limited portion of them, within the narrow 
space of twenty-four hours."* 

This certainly sounds strange : — A human being not 
:able to name " even a limited portion " of beasts and 
birds in twenty-four hours ! Adam might have had 
^mple time to name all then in existence in a fourth 
part or less of twenty-four hours. But even if Adam's 
u Day" had comprehended all the multitude of natural 
days which this writer considers it to have done, the 
difficulty of the task, taking Dr. McCausland's estimate 
of it, would have been but little abated. Does the 
writer really suppose that the bear from antediluvian 
polar regions, the lion and baboon from an antediluvian 
central Africa, the elephant from an imagined India, 
and the feathered tribes from some now extinct Ame- 
rica and Australia, were all transported to Eden, mar- 

* Sermons in Stones, p. 1 21. 



52 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

stalled before Adam, and then transferred back to 
their respective habitats ? How do we know that any 
animals were then created beyond those which were 
inhabitants of the region in which Adam was placed? 
After the Deluge, there was a new creation, or at least 
new formations. This is distinctly enough recorded. 
All that previously had the breath of life (save those 
preserved in the Ark) were destroyed : the preserved 
animals were thus preserved to propagate their own 
kinds, but not to introduce different species : these 
were to be supplied by a fresh exercise of creative or 
formative power — " He renewed the face of the earth/' 
The "replenished" earth must have been much more' 
extensively populated with beasts of the field and birds 
of the air than in the first creation. We venture to 
say must have been, from this recorded fact of the 
naming them all, taken in conjunction with the other 
recorded fact, that selections from, and specimens of, 
all the living creatures, then in existence, were received 
into the Ark, and there supplied with stored food for 
one year. 



SECTION III. 



ON THE POST-DILUVIAN CREATIONS.* 

In the foregoing observations on the Deluge, we have 
felt justified in assuming that the creation of beasts of 
the field and birds of the air, during the six days, was 
..a limited creation, sufficing to stock only those regions 
in which the human family had dispersed itself up to 
.the time of Noah. 

We consider that the circumstances detailed in the 
narrative, not only justify, but compel this conclusion, 
more especially the two recorded facts before noticed, 
namely: — 1. That the animals were not more numerous 
than Adam could survey and name in a brief space of 
time ; and 2. That selections from all the then living 
•creatures — one pair of each sort, having certain com- 
mon characteristics, and seven of the other sorts — were 
all accommodated, together with a year's supply of 
suitable food, within the limits of the Ark. And, 
moreover, that venemous creatures, and beasts of prey, 
were not then in existence. 

It follows, therefore, that the new earth which suc- 
ceeded that which was destroyed by the Deluge, must 
have been supplied with new creations of animals. 

* It is to be noticed that throughout the present section, we mean by 
-the term " creation," only the production of new organized beings, and 
not the creation of additional matter out of nothing. 



54 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



That the vegetable supply Mas not derived from the- 
antediluvian earth, is indisputable : Noah did not take 
with him selections of all seeds and plants, as well as 
of all animals, and even if he had done so, how came 
the olive tree, from which the dove "plucked off a 
leaf"? Olive trees do not grow at the bottom of the 
sea ; and therefore could not have been borne up with, 
the new land. And that the leaf was from a living, 
tree, rooted in the exposed soil, and not from a floating* 
dead branch, Noah well knew from the evidence of living 
freshness which it presented. " Noah knew that the 
waters M r ere abated from off the earth." And then again, 
let the question be considered — when Noah and his 
family, and all that were with him, went forth of the 
Ark, at the bidding of God, — where could they have 
found food, if God had not provided an adequate vege- 
table supply on the new earth, before thus bidding his 
creatures to "Go forth, that they may breed abund- 
antly in the earth, and be fruitful and multiply " ? 

There is nothing in this doctrine of successive crea- 
tions that contradicts any portion of Revelation ; while 
it is directly implied in the language of St. Peter 
already quoted, and elsewhere. The declaration that 
on the seventh day God rested from all the works 
that he had made, does not justify the conclusion that 
the creative Power, or rather that the power of calling 
new organisms into being, was never afterMards to be 
exercised. The plagues of Egypt alone suffice to show 
that such a conclusion cannot be maintained; for 
whatever be supposed in reference to the frogs and 



ON THE TWENTIETH CHAPTER OF EXODUS. 



55 



the locusts, it cannot be disputed that the dust being 
converted into lice was as much a creation as the 
formation of Adam was.* 

No doubt the eleventh verse of the twentieth 
chapter of Exodus will here occur to the reader: — 
« Yor in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, 
the sea, and all that in them is/ 3 But this last word, 
« is/' is absent from the original Hebrew ; and in the 
English Bible is printed in italics to indicate the fact. 
A translator has just as much right to supply the word 
was as the word is; the former having equal claim 
with the latter to be introduced for the purpose merely 
of giving that completion to the sentence which the 
English form requires : and it has a greater claim on 
the score of textual accuracy : for at the time when 
this declaration was made, the then existing produc- 
tions of the earth were avowedly not all introduced 
during the "six days:" thorns and thistles, for in- 
stance, were not made to appear till afterwards ; and 
the Manna supplied to the Israelites in the wilderness 
was unquestionably a subsequent supernatural produc- 
tion, though but a temporary one. It is designated 
" the bread of heaven Manna which thou knewest 

not, neither did thy fathers know." (Dent. viii. 3.) 
And in connection with the matter under considera- 
tion, the following passage from the Prophet Nehe- 

* Even the magicians were forced to acknowledge the unmistakeable 
power of the Creator here ; and were constrained to exclaim—" This is 
the finger of God/'— Ex. viii., 19. (See the remarks on God's resting on 
the seventh day, at the end of the present section). 



56 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



miali (ix. 6) is also worthy of notice. " Thou hast 
made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their 
host, the earthy and all things that are therein., the 
seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them 
all." But as respects the antediluvian creation, "the 
earth, and all things that [then were] therein/' were 
not preserved, but destroyed. The Prophet must 
therefore here refer exclusively to the " heavens and 
the earth which are now/' and which are declared 
elsewhere to he preserved, or "kept in store." 

The passage of St. Peter, whence these latter words 
are taken, and which has been adverted to more than 
once in the course of the present essay, as distinctly 
records also a change in the condition of the heavens, 
as it does a renewal of the earth, after the Deluge. 
The entire passage runs thus : — u Knowing this first, 
that there shall come in the last davs scoffers, walking 
after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise 
of His coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all 
things continue as from the beginning of the creation. 
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the 
word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth 
standing out of the water and in the water : Whereby 
the world that then was, being overflowed with water 
perished: but the heavens and the earth which are 
now/' &c. 

The heavens which were of old are not here said to 
have perished with the earth, though " the heavens 
which are now," are clearly implied to be different 
from those of old, or previous to the Deluge. We 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DECADENCE OF HUMAN LIFE. 57 

infer, therefore, that after this event, the ethereal fluid 
undei'Avent a change.* We know that after the Flood, 
human life became rapidly shortened in duration ; and 
as the surrounding ether, which permeates all things, 
is breathed with the atmospheric air, it is probable 
that it may be the main principle for sustaining vi- 
tality ; and that accordingly a change in the condition 
of that subtile fluid, inhaled at every inspiration, is all 
that would be necessary for the purpose of shortening 
the existence of all breathing creatures. 

The fact that the human race after the Deluge all 
descended from Noah and his family, precludes the 
notion that the human organization was deteriorated 
through any causes that physiology can assign. Noah 
himself was remarkably vigorous : he was six hundred 
years old when he entered the Ark, and his whole life 
extended to nine hundred and thirty years. But his 
son, Shem, who was nearly one hundred years old at 
the time of the Flood, reached only to the age of six 
hundred years; and at the time of Peleg, human 
life had diminished to half this extent ; and it con- 
tinued to diminish till, by the time the children of 
Israel came out of Egypt, it had dwindled down to 
very nearly its present contracted limits. 

But in thus ascribing, as a physical cause for this 
decadence of human life, after the Flood, a modification 
of the ethereal fluid, which we regard as the material 
of the terrestrial and sidereal heavens, we do not con- 

* On the meaning of the term " heavens," see Science Elucidative of 
Scripture. 



58 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



ceive that the change in its condition was a universal 
change, extending to the remote regions of space. In 
this, as in every other of the arrangements and ap- 
pointments of Omnipotence, nothing superfluous can 
ever be supposed to have been done. The change may 
have been limited, and — on the supposition that it 
actually took place — no doubt was limited, within the 
range of our atmosphere. 

It may be said, and truly said, that all this is but 
conjecture. But we submit, taking into due conside- 
ration the words of St. Peter, that it is a reasonable 
conjecture. It should never be forgotten, that he who 
ventures to assign the specific physical agency which 
the Deity invokes to accomplish any of His declared 
purposes, has seldom anything beyond reasonable con- 
jecture to determine his selection. In Revelation^ 
especially in the narrative and historical parts of it, 
facts and events are recorded simply in their order of 
succession, usually without any circumstantial details % 
and being authoritative statements, always without 
physical explanations. There are two ways in which 
the absent details may be supplied : the gap may be 
filled in by conjectural positions and assumptions pur- 
posely contrived— not to unite the parts into a con- 
sistent and harmonious whole, but to force them into 
discordant conflict with each other. Or, on the other 
hand, an unprejudiced consideration of the story may 
suggest to the mind such attendant, though unrecorded 
circumstances, as may weld together the disjointed 
facts into a perfectly consistent and continuous narra- 



WHAT IS REASONABLE AND PROBABLE IS ADMISSIBLE. 59 

tivc. And if such suggestions violate no principle of 
physical science, and are in themselves reasonable and 
probable, they are surely at least as valid and admis- 
sible, for the purpose of confirming the veracity of the 
story, as the arbitrary inventions of prejudiced minds 
are for the purpose of destroying its truthfulness. 

And in a controversy of this kind, it is amply suffi- 
cient that the explanations offered, by way of answer 
to the objections advanced, have these characteristics 
of reasonableness and probability; and that it be shewn 
that the counter-suppositions and assumptions arc de- 
ficient in the like indispensable features. 

It is not imperatively necessary that the defender of 
the narrative should be able to supply the very details 
which the narrator himself might have supplied, had 
he so chosen. It is not incumbent on him to discover 
and point out the actual concomitant circumstances.. 
His business is — not to amplify the account, by intro- 
ducing into it all the subordinate events that really 
occurred, with the order and manner of their occur- 
rence : — it is simply to shew that the objections made 
to the consistency of the declared events, and to the 
physical possibility of their being real events, are 
unsupported by valid reasoning ; and that on the con- 
trary, the narrative may be shewn to be perfectly 
consistent, and the facts perfectly admissible, as such,, 
without any departure either from the principles of 
physical science, or the principles of common sense. 
In the carrying out of this purpose, it is really of not 
the slightest moment whether the explanations and 
details entered into are the true ones or not. They are 



80 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

not given to perfect or complete the Record — to supply 
oversights or omissions; but to disprove the assertion 
that they cannot he given without violating physical 
truth : — that satisfactory explanations are, in fact, im- 
possible. If the truth of this assertion he disproved — 
.and to disprove it is the sole object of the foregoing 
discussion, it becomes nugatory — its force vanishes. 
Whether or not, in the course of that discussion, the 
causes or operations assigned are really those which 
produced the declared effects, or whether or not the 
explanations of matters which are left without any 
explanation at all, he the true explanations, are con- 
siderations quite beside the question. The real ques- 
tion to be settled is this : — Can the recorded events be 
accounted for, in any ivay whatever, that shall be con- 
sistent with the salient points of the story, and at the 
same time not inconsistent with the principles of phy- 
sical science ? If they can — and we submit that it has 
been here shewn how they can — then it follows that, 
on whatever other grounds the "Mosaic Story " may be 
impugned, it cannot be fairly impugned on this ground — 
the ground, namely, of its inherent inconsistency and 
impossibility. And every candid mind must admit 
that it is no argument against this conclusion, that 
imagination may conjure up accessory circumstances 
and events, which when dovetailed into the narrative 
may destroy its credibility ; for the veracity of any story 
whatever may be damaged, to any extent, by stratagems 
of this kind. Any one who undertakes to prove that 
the events recorded in any narrative, deficient in cir- 
cumstantial details, are of impossible occurrence, un- 



PRINCIPLES TO BE ADHERED TO IN THE DISCUSSION. 61 

dertakcs a task of much greater difficulty than sucji 
writers as Dr. Colenso appear to be aware of ; and those 
who sit down to examine the reasonings of these per- 
sons should always be on their guard against being 
entrapped by plausible sophistry under the guise of 
sound logic. The two principles which we are now 
about to enunciate should always be borne in mind, by 
©very one earnest in his search for the truth, when he 
is comparing arguments, for and against, in contro- 
versies of this kind. They are these : — 

1. He who undertakes to prove the impossibility of 
anything, is absolutely forbidden, on the principles 
of sound logic, from introducing into his argument 
any conjecture or supposition whatever in support of 
that argument. 

2. But he who undertakes to prove the possibility of 
the same thing, bus full liberty to offer any conjecture 
he pleases; provided only that the conjecture itself 
involves no impossibility. 

That these principles are sound, will, we think, 
appear after a little reflection. For, in reference to 
the first, it is plain that such terms as " perhaps/' or 
"it seems to be/' or "it maybe/' and the like, all 
imply the possibility of its being otherwise ; in fact, 
of its being the direct contrary. Such mere surmises 
and suppositions so thoroughly vitiate the argument as 
to render it quite worthless. To prove an event to be 
impossible, you must shew it to be so from what must 
be, not from what may be : this latter form of expres- 
sion is simply a confession of doubt as to whether the 



62 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



event be impossible or not. And even if the objector 
do not go the length of affirming any portion of the 
narrative to be impossible,, but merely untrue, still he 
is interdicted from inventing collateral circumstances, 
and founding his adverse conclusion upon them. He 
must either shew that every conceivable train of cir- 
cumstances necessitates the same adverse conclusion, 
or else he must shew that none other than those which 
he assigns can possibly be adduced. The attempt to 
prove a negative, merely from what may be, can do 
nothing more than prove the logical incompetency of 
him by whom the attempt is made. TThat may be 
may not be. 

As an example of this inconclusive kind of reasoning, 
we may select, from an abundance of similar instances 
of logical infirmity, the futile remarks at page 43 of 
Dr. Colenso^s Part IV. In reference to Genesis ix, 3, 
he says — "the Elohist records the permission to eat 
animal food, as given after the flood, in agreement with 
his account of the Creation, where we read i, 29. 
"And Elohim said, Behold I give you every herb 
seeding seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and 
every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed, 
to you it shall be for food." And then, to prove that 
"the Elohist" knew less about it than the Bishop, the 
latter reasons thus — 

"The Jehovist, however, makes Abel a ' tender of 
sheep/ iv, 2 : and, though sheep might, no doubt, have 
been kept only for the sake of their ivool or milk, yet 
in iv, 4, the firstlings of the flock are sacrificed, and 



THE SOUNDNESS OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 63 

only, or chiefly, their fat seems to have been offered. 
It may be fairly inferred that, according to the 
Jehovist, the rest ivas supposed to be eaten afterwards, 
as in the case of ordinary peace-offerings/' To call 
this reasoning would be an abuse of the term : it proves 
nothing. And yet this is the logic by which the 
writer expects to persuade his readers that man always 
lived upon animal food ! 

That the second of the foregoing principles is a 
sound one will appear from reflecting that every 
hypothesis, which accounts satisfactorily for the event, 
is an admissible hypothesis; inasmuch as it supplies 
the desideratum : — it does all that is demanded : — it 
accounts for the fact ; and therefore suffices to prove 
that the proposition which affirms the accounting for it 
to be impossible, is utterly untenable. He who opposes 
this proposition, by argument, is quite unshackled as 
to the range of possibilities from which he may select 
the materials for his reasoning. But he who under- 
takes to maintain it, by argument, must, to succeed, 
rigorously prove that, however extensive this range 
may be, it cannot supply the requisite means for con- 
structing a sound counter- argument. His opponent 
may press into his service any possibility whatever; 
while he himself is precluded from advancing anything 
but realities : the possible circumstances which he may 
adduce in support of his proposition, may all be 
assented to as possible ; but they can give no cogency 
to his reasonings, or weight to his conclusions : while 
to his opponent, possible circumstances — be they the 



64 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



real circumstances of the case or not, are all that he is 
challenged to produce. In the arguments of the one, 
probabilities and conjectures, however reasonable in 
themselves, are inadmissible : in the arguments of the 
other, these and these only are all that are called for. 
The allegation, be it remembered, is — not that the 
event cannot be accounted for on a specified hypothesis, 
but that it cannot be accounted for on any conceivable 
hypothesis whatever.* 

There is another matter, too, which the common 
practice of anti-Bible critics renders it necessary" 
for readers of their works to be awake to. It is not 
allowable, in any critical examination of a portion of 
Scripture, for the critic to eliminate the Divine Agency 
where the narrative distinctly declares it to have] 
operated. This is not a " free handling/' but a false 
handling. If you alter the conditions or circumstances 
under which the recorded events are stated to have 
occurred, you corrupt the text of the story. In this 
vitiated form, the results of criticism upon it are value- 

* As Dr. Chalmers justly observes : — " It does not fall upon the 
defenders of Moses to bring forward positive or specific proofs for the- 
truth of any system reconcileable with his history, beyond the historical 
evidence of the history itself. A thousand systems might be devised,, 
one of which only can be true, but each of which may be consistent 
with all the details of the book of Genesis. We cannot, and we do not,, 
offer any one of these systems as that which is to be positively received ^ 
but we offer them all as so many ways of disposing of the objections, and 
while upon us lies the bare task of proposing them, upon our antagonists 
lies the heavy work of overthrowing them all before they can set aside 
the direct testimony of the sacred historian, or assert that his account of 
the creation is contradicted by known appearances." — Chalmers's Works 
(Constable & Co., 1855), vol. v. p. 630. 



THE AGENCY SUPERNATURAL; NOT THE INSTRUMENTS. ()."> 

less ; inasmuch as tkey apply, not to the story itself, 
but to something different. 

Nor is it allowable, in such writers, when professing 
to take any revealed narrative — this " Story of the 
Flood/' for instance, in all its integrity, to argue as if 
the supernatural element was declared to be in the 
instruments employed, instead of solely in the Agent 
using them : — as if the materials themselves were 
affirmed to be obscure and mysterious, and such as 
nature disowns ; and then to appeal to nature's verdict 
against the physical possibility of the occurrence. 
Whereas Divine interposition in the natural world — 
always excepting those miracles, more strictly so called, 
with which nature has nothing to do, is analogous in 
kind, though immeasurably more potent in degree, to 
human interposition in the natural world. In both 
cases, mere matter is made subordinate to mind: its 
primitive arrangements are forcibly disturbed, and its 
dormant energies coerced into activity, by that which 
is not matter, but mind. In human affairs, all this is 
conceded : it is admitted that the monument of Lon- 
don, and the cathedral of St. Paul's, manifest the mind 
•of Christopher Wren ; the steam-engine, the mind of 
James Watt ; the Bridgewater Canal, the mind of 
Richard Brindley ; and the Britannia Bridge, the mind 
of Robert Stephenson : and the deluging a world with 
water exceeds the magnitude of these and such like 
performances, only in proportion as the Divine Mind 
exceeds in power the human; the mere physical 
agencies equally existing for both. 

F 



66 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



"We shall only add, in conclusion, that it is a puzzle 
quite inexplicable by us, how men of even ordinary 
sagacity can admit the existence of a Supernatural 
Being, and yet, in a Record of events in which He is 
distinctly declared to have been the immediate Agent, 
persistently deny the histoiical accuracy of that Record 
on the ground that it narrates supernatural acts. Hoy- 
can the direct acts of a Supernatural Power be other- 
wise than supernatural — and consequently inexplicable 
upon natural principles alone ? He may employ phy- 
sical agents as means, or instruments j but He must em- 
ploy them as only Supernatural Power can employ them. 

To suppose otherwise is to suppose not only that 
God abdicates his supremacy, but also the further im- 
possibility, that the Creator of Nature becomes a part 
of his own creation. What is referrible solely to 
Nature, is referrible solely to the creature, and not to 
the Creator (directly) at all ; unless we admit the con- 
tradiction that the creature is the creator. Man 
never does anything, knowingly, that nature can do for 
him : God never does anything but what nature alone 
cannot do. Nature did not originate itself : and all 
its regularly recurring phenomena are nothing more 
than so many manifestations, to human eyes, of un- 
swerving obedience to originally impressed commands 
— to the edicts of an Almighty Legislator. The 
laws of Nature are but secondary causes ; all im- 
plying a primary, — that is, a supernatural cause. 

In the eloquent romance which M. Renan styles 
" The Life of Jesus/' the author affects to find evidence 



ABSURD OBJECTIONS Ol' M. RENAN. 



67 



of the unhistorical character of the New Testament, 
in those very features which people in general would 
expect it, if truthful, to present ; and which they would 
more especially look for, as indispensably necessary to 
stamp with the impress of authenticity, every Record 
declared to be a Divine Revelation. He says : — " That 
the Gospels are in part legendary, is evident ; since 
they are full of miracles, and of the supernatural." ! 
Which is sheer nonsense. That the acts of a super- 
natural Being, can be other than supernatural acts, is 
as impossible as that the processes of Nature can be 
other than natural processes. 

In terminating the present section, the writer may 
observe, that he is not singular in his advocacy of a 
post-diluvian creation. The same doctrine is urged 
with much earnestness by Granville Penn • and is coun- 
tenanced by Dr. Pritchard, by Archdeacon Pratt, and 
also by Mr. Gossc, a living naturalist of high character 
and reputation."* 

* See the Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geoloqies, 
by Granville Penn. Esq., vol. II.; Scripture and Science not at Variance, 
by Archdeacon Pratt ; The Romance of Natural History, by Philip Henry 
Gosse, F.R.S., &c. ; and Dr. Pritchard's profound and comprehensive 
works on the Physical History of Man. 

The first of the works here referred to, is a very elaborate, and we 
think valuable performance. The present writer considers, however, 
that Mr. Penn has indulged in more opposition to geology than was 
deserved, or than was even necessary for his main purpose ; but his 
chapters on the Deluge are very much in accordance with what has 
been advanced in the preceding section, all of which was, however, com- 
pleted before Mr. Penn's instructive volumes were seen by the writer of 
it. The substance of the article which follows " On the Rivers of Eden," 
is entirely due to Mr. Penn. 



68 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



On the Rivers of Eden. 

By a searching and laborious examination of all the 
copies of the Scriptures handed down to ns in ancient 
manuscripts, it is admitted by the most eminent Biblical 
scholars, that certain marginal notes and illustrations 
written, as such, in the very early MSS., have, by sub- 
sequent transcribers, been incorporated into the text. 
There is great a priori likelihood that such should be 
the case. Scarce and highly important manuscripts, 
earnestly studied by their possessors, would be very 
likely to receive on their margins an occasional ampli- 
fication of what the reader might regard as deficient in 
circumstantial details : the great brevity of the Bible 
narratives would, here and there, offer a strong tempta- 
tion to this; and a subsequent possessor of a MS. — 
thus enriched, as it would be considered to be, if the 
annotator had possessed high reputation for learning 
and piety — estimating the gloss as little short of in- 
spired, might, in his own transcription, venture to 
introduce it into the text. That such has actually been 
done, the researches of Lowth, Marsh, and Keimicott 
have conclusively proved. 

In reference to the four rivers of Eden, Mr. Gran- 
ville Penn, in his learned work on the Mineral and 
Mosaical Geologies, offers these remarks : — 

" In the second chapter of Genesis, there appears an 
internal critical evidence of an insertion of the 11th, 
12th, 13th, and 14th verses, similar to that of the 4th 
verse in the fifth chapter of St. John's Gospel; and 



GLOSSES IX EARLY COPIES OF THE SCRIPTURES. G9 



constituting, in a similar manner, a parenthesis inter- 
secting the thread of the narration, and introduced 
solely for a similar purpose of illustration. It does not 
Wear the character of the simple narrative in which it 
appears, but of the surcharge of a gloss or note of a 
later age, founded upon the fanciful traditions then 
prevailing with respect to the situation of the ancient 
Paradise. The reader will find evidence of the uncon- 
quered difficulty of reconciling this glossal description 
with true geography, if he consults Michaelis' Supple- 
menta ad Lex. Heb. on the names of Eden, and of the 
four rivers mentioned in the four verses in question. 
From all these considerations, therefore, I have long 
been brought to a persuasion, on critical grounds alone, 
and without any relation to the particular argument of 
the present treatise, that those four verses were a gloss 
of very ancient date, which was received, and became 
incorporated, into the primitive text, either during the 
captivity, whilst the Hebrews were actually dwelling in 
the regions bordering upon the Hiddekel (or Tigris) 
and Euphrates, or soon after their return from that 
captivity, and before the translation of their Scriptures 
into Greek; and that the text and the gloss stood 
originally thus : — 

And the Lord God had 

planted a garden in Eden 

from the first ; and there 

he put the man whom he 

had formed. And out of 

the ground the Lord God 



70 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



liad niade to grow every 
tree tliat is pleasant to 
the sight, and good for 
food; the tree of life, 
also, in the midst of the 
garden, and the tree of 
the knowledge of good 
and evil. And a river 
went out of Eden, for (or 
after) watering the gar- 

The name of the first den j but from tlieilCe And the name of he 
is Pison ; that is it second river is Gihon 

which compasseth the (above) it Was parted, and the same is it that en. 
wholelandof Havilah, diyided t f ^ d / compasseth the whole 

where there is gold; ° V Wi land of Ethiopia. And 

and the gold of that SOlU'Ces) . And the Loi'd the llame of the third 
land is good: there is isffiddekel; that is it 

bdellium and the onyx IjOd tOOK the man, and which goeth in front of 

stoae - put him into the garden Assyria ' A,id the 

x ° fourth river is Eu- 

of Eden, to dress it, and plates. 

to keep it, etc. 
" That the illustration intended by the gloss is un- 
skilful, and does not answer to the text is manifest ; 
for the text mentions only one river, whereas the gloss 
undertakes to describe four rivers. Michaelis shows, 
that the Hebrew for heads denotes sources in the Syriac 
and Arabic languages ; and he expressly states, that it 
never signifies the branches of a river in the Oriental 
tongues. So that the historian relates : — that < God 
planted a garden in Eden — out of which Eden flowed a 
river which had watered the garden ; but from thence, 
that is, upwards, above its exit, it was distributed 
to four parent heads, or sources, issuing four streams 



GRANVILLE PENN's COMMENTS. 



71 



which afterwards united, and formed one river at their 
departure out of Eden : the four interior converging 
streams, not the one exterior united river, irrigating 
the Eden in which was the Garden, or Paradise/ 

"Thus, the final confluence of four contributary 
streams from the four sources or heads, to which the 
historian traces them in Eden, produced the one river 
discharging itself out of Eden, of which he speaks ; 
which four confluent streams, therefore, cannot have 
any relation to the four rivers recited by the scholiast 
in the gloss/'' 

" Since all the rivers named in the gloss have their 
origin in Armenia, the locality alone enables us to per- 
ceive, that its Hebrew author was deeply impressed 
with the traditions respecting the seat of the renewal 
of the human race ; and that he confounded and iden- 
tified it with that of its origin ; and, that he thus 
violently applied to the latter, the characters properly 
belonging to the former, in which confusion he is very 
generally folloAved even at the present day. The 
fluvial description introduced into the four verses, 
cannot therefore be regarded, critically, as forming 
any part of the Mosaical history ; and consequently, 
it can have no power to affect the strong evidence 
which has been deduced from that history, and from 
the sense of the ancient Jewish and Christian churches, 
of the destruction of the primitive earth by the waters 
of the Deluge/'" Mr. Peim justifies the slight changes 

* A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. By 
Granville Penn, Es'j. Second edition, vol. II., chap. xiv. 



72 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



lie lias made in the received version of the above verses 
from Genesis, by a critical examination of the original 
Hebrew in his foot-notes. 

It must certainly strike every reader, that the con- 
tinuity of the narrative can be preserved only by the 
removal of the alleged interpolation : and it Mould 
appear inexplicable that the sacred historian should 
suddenly break off, in the midst of an orderly and con- 
secutive narration of the most momentous of past 
events, to digress upon things of the present — and 
these, too, things of vastly inferior consequence; and 
then, again changing the tense, proceed with the nar- 
rative of the past transactions as if no such interruption 
had taken place. Besides ; the style of Moses, in his- 
record of mau ; s creation and early history, is eminently 
brief, and condensed; Mhile that of the scholiast is 
diffuse, and circumstantial. It is very probable that 
the latter Mould supply, in the margin of his MS., the 
information (derived from human research, or even 
from learned legend) Mhich he thought he possessed,, 
respecting the geography and treasures of the locality ; 
but very improbable that Moses Mould have departed 
from his characteristic style, kept in abeyance his sole 
purpose, and interrupted the sequence of events in a 
narrative of the deepest interest, to speak of matters 
so unimportant, and so irrelevant. 

T\ e submit that these are reasonable inferences — 
regarding Moses as a mere uninspired man, taking 
upon himself the great task of writing the history of 
the creation from some light imparted to him on the 



REASONS FOR REJECTING THE PASSAGE AS SPURIOUS. 



73 



subject, lie knew not how, or by whom.* But as a 
Divine Revelation, in the recording of which Moses 
was little more than the pen in the hand of the 
Almighty, it is in the highest degree improbable that 
the passages in question should have formed part of the 
communication— that a digression should have been 
made to inform the human instrument on geographical 
matters, then patent to human observation, by inspira- 
tion.]- 

We may remark, however, that we do not sec any 
force in Michaelis' shewing that heads denote sources, 
and never the branches of a river ; nor do we see the 
inference from this, that it was not a single river, pass- 

* k portion of this history would have reached Moses, no doubt, by 
tradition from Adam, through Methuselah, to Noah, and thence onward 
to Moses:— that portion, namely, which declares the origin ot man 
('•Dust thou art"), and the circumstances of the Fall. But what has 
been called the "Mosaic Cosmogony" had not been communicated to 
Adam or to any of the antediluvian patriarchs ; at least, we have not 
the slightest ground for supposing that it had. Be this however as it 
may, Moses was the "chosen servant" first appointed by God to record 
those creative acts which the Creator alone could have revealed, or 
which could have been originally known only by inspiration. What- 
e or, therefore, may have come to Moses by tradition, only so much as 
nras strictly true, and of Divine communication, could have had the 
Divine sanction ; and this sanction was equivalent to a direct Revelation 
to the sacred writer himself. 

f The author is well aware of the use which certain critics may 
make of these observations. They recommend us to read the Bible as 
we would read any other book, but they do not admit that we should 
read any other book (Shakespeare, for instance) as they enjoin us to 
read the Bible. Glosses have been discovered and pointed out m 
Shakespeare ; but the writings of Shakespeare have been recognised, as 
such, nevertheless : they have not been repudiated as all gloss. Inter- 
polations have been rejected from Shakespeare because they bear the 
marks of being non-Shakespearian. 



74 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



iug through Eden, that; on its exit, branched off into four 
streams ; but four streams that united, on their exit, 
-and formed a single river. In the Commentary of Keil 
and Delitzsch (Clark's Theol. Lib. 1864), the Hebrew 
text is stated to convey this meaning : — " The stream 
took its rise in Eden, flowed through the garden to 
water it, and on leaving the garden was divided into 
four heads, or beginnings of rivers, that is, into four 
arms or separate streams." (Vol. L, p. 81.) 

But these points of verbal criticism, however interest- 
ing to Hebrew scholars, have little to do with the 
question as to whether or not the verses referred to 
above be a marginal gloss, introduced originally into 
an early MS., and then transferred to the text by a 
later transcriber. It is plain, however, that whoever 
the scholiast may have been, he must have understood 
the text in the sense just quoted ; and which certainly 
is that which our version has retained. 

(For an account of various opinions respecting Eden 
and its rivers, see the article Eden, in Smith's Diction- 
ary of the Bible.) 



NOTE. 

ON THE DIVINE REST. 

" And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified 
it : because that in it he had rested from all his work 
which God created and made." (Gen. ii., 3.) 

It would be quite contrary to the express declara- 



REST FROM CREATING OUT OF NOTHING. 



75 



$ions of Scripture, in numerous places, to regard the 
rest here spoken of as implying a state of continuous 
and uninterrupted repose : — a total and eternal cessation 
from the exercise of divine power in reference to the 
things of the material world. 

Nevertheless, there are passages in the inspired 
volume which clearly imply that, even in the enlarged 
sense just mentioned, the Divine Being did, and 
eternally will rest, from the performance of certain of 
his "works": — the works, namely, that He created 
and made : that there will, thenceforward, be no fresh 
exercise of creative power, no actual addition to the 
matter then and now in existence. The creations of 
material things, out of nothing, are peculiarly, and 
exclusively, the personal acts of the Almighty : — they 
are performances which were never delegated to any 
angelic or inferior being; and it was from these 
" works," so immediately and essentially his own, that 
God rested on the seventh day. 

On any other interpretation of the Divine Rest, we 
should find it impossible to reconcile certain passages 
of Holy Writ with the text quoted above ; and even 
with each other. For example, compare the 9th 
verse of the third chapter of Hebrews : — " When your 
fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my Avorks 
forty years " — with the 10th verse of the chapter next 
following : — cc For he that is entered into his rest, he 
also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from 
his." In this latter passage, by God's works, " works 
of creation," exclusively, must be meant. " My father 



76 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



worketh hitherto, and I work." These words of the 
Saviour refer, exclusively, to such visible performances 
(in so far as material things are concerned) as are not 
independent of pre-existing matter. 

Bishop Colenso is, therefore, in error when he affirms 
(p. 190, partlY.) that the production of new organisms, 
after the Deluge, would he a violation of " the Divine 
Sabbath/'' "We submit that these new productions were 
not new creations out of nothing, but formations out 
of something : — out of the matter that had itself been 
created, out of nothing, previously : just as Adam was 
formed " of the dust of the ground." 

In our article on these post-diluvian productions, we 
have not scrupled to call the new races of animals, &c. r 
creations; but we there warned the reader that the 
term " creation " was employed in a restricted sense, 
and not as implying any actual addition to the matter 
previously in existence. The Bishop appears to regard 
"the Divine Sabbath" as a sort of divine torpor — as 
implying a cessation for ever from all manifestation of 
power — either mediately or immediately — in the mate- 
rial universe, after the work of the six days. But, 
just as man's gabbath is a rest from man's handiwork, — 
from work peculiarly Ms oivn, and not a period of dor- 
mant repose and inactivity, so the Divine Sabbath is 
exclusively a rest from those creative works which are 
peculiarly, and pre-eminently, God's own; inasmuch 
as they were executed directly by Himself, — by his 
Almighty fiat alone, — by uncommunicated, and incom- 
municable, power— "by the breath of his mouth." 



DR. PUSEY OX THE WORD " CREATION. 



77 



\Vc do not know from tlie narrative of tlic six days' 
work, how many of the living organisms then produced 
were creations out of nothing: we arc certain that 
Adam and Eve were not such creations, because we are 
distinctly told that they were not. Nevertheless, they 
are said in Scripture to have been created, since, in the 
original, the word" create " docs not imply, necessa- 
rily, " out of nothing/' And we have thus authority 
sufficient for employing this term as we have done in 
our article " On the post-diluvian Creations and we 
are further confirmed in the propriety of the word, as 
there applied, by the following remarks upon it by the 
Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford, — the Rev. Dr. 
Pusey, who, in a communication to the late Dr. Buck- 
land, writes thus : — 

"Two opposite errors have, I think, been committed 
by critics, with regard to the meaning of the word bar a, 
' created 3 ; the one, by those who asserted that it must 
in itself signify ' created out of nothing' ; the other 
by those who endeavoured, by aid of etymology, to 
shew that it must in itself signify ' formation out of 
existing matter/ In fact, neither is the case ; nor am 
I aware of any language in which there is a word sig- 
nifying necessarily 'created out of nothing'; as, of 
course, on the other hand, no word when used of the 
agency of God, would, in itself, imply the previous 
existence of matter. Thus the English word 'create' 
by which bara is translated, expresses that the thing 
created received its existence from God, without in 
itself implying whether God called that thing into 



78 



MODERX SCEPTICISM. 



existence oat of nothing, or no ; for our very addition 
of the words 'out of nothing/ shews that the word 
' creation' has not, in itself, that force ; nor, indeed, 
when we speak of ourselves as creatures of God's hand, 
do we at all mean that we were physically formed out 
of nothing. In like manner, whether hara should be 
paraphrased by c created out of nothing' (as far as we 
can comprehend these words) or, ' gave a new and dis- 
tinct state of existence to a substance already existing/ 
must depend upon the context, the circumstances, or 
what God has elsewhere revealed, not upon the mere 
force of the word. This is plain, from its use in 
Gen. i. 27 of the creation of man, who, as we are 
instructed, chap. ii. 7, was formed out of previously 
existing matter, the 6 dust of the ground. ' The word 
bara is, indeed, so far stronger than asah, ' made/ in 
that bara can only be used with reference to God, 
whereas asah may be applied to man. The dilference 
is exactly that which exists in English between the 
words by which they are rendered, c created' and 
c made.' But this seems to me to belong rather to our 
mode of conception than to the subject itself; for 
c making 3 when spoken of with reference to God, is 

equivalent to ' creating. '* 

Dr. Pusey's Note in Buckland's Geology and Mine- 
rology : Edition of 1858, p. 19. 



* Yet creating and making need not be contemporaneous acts. 



79 



SECTION IV. 

SPECIMEN'S OF DR. COLENSO^S LOGIC. 

In the present article we propose to give a few samples 
of the reasoning which Dr. Colenso employs to prove the 
incredibility of certain events recorded in the Penta- 
teuch. Many persons npon whose minds the writings 
of this author have exercised a baneful influence, have 
never examined the writings themselves at all. They 
have received their impressions wholly from the cheap 
free-thinking publications of the day, wherein the 
author's results only, however unwarrantably arrived 
at, are represented to the reader as either the conclusive 
deductions of modern science, or as the no less sound 
inferences of reason and common sense. "Whatever 
may have been the degree of predisposition to receive 
these impressions, we cannot but think that they would 
have been greatly weakened by a subsequent perusal 
of the books themselves ; which are replete with logical 
fallacies of the most transparent kind. And as to 
science, although the word " science " is repeated ad 
nauseam, the thing itself will be sought for in vain in 
the writings alluded to. Of the logical fallacies we shall 
here select a few specimens ; and shall also give'an ex- 
ample or two of what Dr. Colenso regards as science. 

1. In Exodus xvi. 16, it is recorded, in reference 
to the manna supplied to the Israelites in the 



80 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



Wilderness. — " This is the thing- which the Lord hath 
commanded, Gather of it every man according to his 
eating, an omer for every man, according to the mnnher 
of yonr persons; take ye every man for them ivhich 
are in his tents" 

Dr. Colenso takes the words here italicised for the 
subject of his criticism, and fastens upon the word 
tents. How did the Israelites get these tents? He 
answers this question by denying their existence ; and 
he proves his position thus : " If they had had tents, 
how could they have earned them?" [That they 
must have been carried out of Egypt he assumes.] 
" They could not have borne them on their shoulders, 
since these were already occupied with other burdens." 
And after sufficiently magnifying these burdens, to 
prepare for his foregone conclusion, he infers, of course, 
that the Israelites could not have borne the additional 
weight. The first part of the proof is thus disposed of : 
he then enters upon the second part, as follows — 
" There were cattle certainly, which might have been 
turned to some account for this purpose, if trained to 
act as pack-oxen." [The more suitable animals, asses, 
were, of course, left behind.*] " But then, what a 
prodigious number of trained oxen would have been 
needed to carry these 200,000 tents ! One ox will 
carry 120 lbs.; and a canvas tent, that will hold two 

* Why Dr. Colenso should have suppressed the mention of asses, is 
hest known to himself, as he knew that these were among the Leasts. 
" Every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb."' — Ex. 
xiii. 13. 



the bishop's difficulty about the tents. 81 

people, and a fair quantity of luggage, weighs from 25 
to 40 lbs. Of such tents as the above, with poles, 
pegs, etc., a single ox might, possibly, carry four, and 
even this would require 50,000 oxen." [The wagons 
having been left behind with the asses.] " But these 
would be of the lightest modern material, whereas the 
Hebrew tents, we must suppose, were made of skins, 
and were, therefore, much heavier. Besides this, these 
latter were family tents, not made merely for soldiers 
or travellers, and required to be very much larger for 
purposes of common decency and convenience. One 
ox, perhaps might have carried one such a tent, large 
enough to accommodate ten persons, with its apparatus 
of pole and cords : and thus they would have needed 
for this purpose 200,000 oxen. But oxen are not 
usually trained to carry goods upon their backs as 
pack-oxen, and will by no means do so, if untrained."* 
And thus concludes the second part of the proof. 

Now the logic of all this is as follows : — 

The Israelites, under the assumed conditions, could 
not carry all the tents themselves. 

The oxen could not carry all the tents themselves. 

Therefore men and oxen together, — the burden being 
divided between them — could not carry all the tents 
themselves : hence, since the asses, of course, carried 
nothing, the tents must have been all left behind. 
Q. E. D. 

But why this wasteful expenditure of logic at all ? 
The author had already proved — experimentally 

* Oolenso, part I., p. 47. 

' Gr 



82 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



proved, that the Israelites could not have carried even 
themselves out of Egypt; and everybody would have 
assented, without proof, that neither could the tents, 
with their " apparatus of poles and cords," have carried 

themselves. 

Leaving however the reasoning wholly out of con- 
sideration, just look at the most unwarrantable 
premises on which it is based. These affirm, as a fact 
obviously implied in the command — " Take ye every 
man for them which are in his tents," that every man 
reposed under a tent; whereas the other extreme, 
namely, that no man at all reposed under a tent, is the 
more reasonable inference from the passage. For the 
command is — 1st, " Gather of it every man according 
to his eating ; " and 2nd, " Take ye every man for 
them which are in his tents 33 ; that is, evidently, for 
his family, the women and children, who may have 
been the only occupants of those tents. That the 
single men, if they had tents, had them to themselves, 
there can, of course, be no question; and yet every 
occupant of each bachelor-dwelling, " every man 33 is 
commanded to go out and gather " for them which are 
in his tent"— his tenantless tent; an absurdity which 
completely destroys the hypothesis of the single men 
occupying tents at all. 

Did the Bishop never see a gipsy tent? It is 
formed with three sticks, covered usually with the 
woman's red cloak and a shawl ; and similar habita- 
tions the Israelites, most likely, extemporised in the 
wilderness. We do not believe that they carried from 



THE ISRAELITES HARNESSED FOR THE JOURNEY. 83 



Egypt any " apparatus of poles, and pegs, and cords " 
— as thougli they had been supplied by Edgington — 
at all. Covering would have accumulated daily from 
the skins of the sheep and oxen slaughtered for food, 
and for sacrifice. 

[But one covering they had, of which the Bishop takes 
no account. I read in Psalm cv. 39: "He spread a 
cloud for a covering, and fire to give light in the night." 
So that, with this cloud to cast its refreshing shade 
between them and the noon-tide heat, and at night the 
pillar of fire to warm and cheer them, they would not 
require the same amount of protection as might other- 
wise have been necessary. Happy people ! " The 
Lord was their keeper j the Lord was their shade upon 
their right hand, so that the sun did not smite them 
by day, nor the moon by night/' (Psalm exxi. 5, 6.)]* 

2. Of a piece with the foregoing are the Bishop's 
assumptions and reasonings in reference to Ex. xiii. 18. 
— " The children of Israel went up harnessed out of the 
land of Egypt." On which he says : " The word here 
rendered harnessed appears to mean armed" But 
whatever to the Bishop it may appear to mean, to every 
body else it must mean simply equipped for the journey ; 
and this interpretation of it is fully supported even by 
the Bishop's own remarks ; although he seems uncon- 

* Extracted from " Moses or the Zulu ? A detailed Reply to the 
Objections contained in Parts I. and II. of Bishop Colenso's Work. By 
the Rev. W. Wickes, M.A., formerly Scholar of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge," &c, &c. 

We cordially recommend this very able and instructive examination 
of Dr. Colenso's criticisms to the earnest attention of all ^Yhon^ those 
criticisms have bewildered or misled. 



&4 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



scious of their real logical tendency. He says : — " It 
is, however, inconceivable that these down-trodden 
oppressed people should have been allowed by Pharoah 
to possess arms, so as to turn out at a moment's 
notice 600,000 armed men. If such a mighty host 
had had arms in their hands, would they not have risen 
long ago for their liberty, or, at all events, would there 
have been no danger of their rising ? " Now the only 
fair conclusion from this " inconceivable " state of 
things is, that " harnessed " could not mean " armed." 
If people are harnessed for battle, they are armed ; if 
for a journey, they are equipped for travelling. And, 
strangely enough, the Bishop actually describes this 
equipment in a subsequent page (p. 55), when speaking 
of " the specific directions — about choosing the lamb, 
killing it at even, sprinkling its blood, and eating it, 
with unleavened bread, 'not raw, nor sodden at all 
with water, but roast with fire/ 'with their loins 
girded, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their 
hand ' " — that is, harnessed for the journey. 

Again : he says (p. 49) , " It cannot surely be sup- 
posed that the strong, able-bodied, men kept regular 
ranks, as if marching for war, when they were only 
hastening out of Egypt, and when their services must 
have been so much required for the assistance of the 
weaker members of their families, the women and 
children, the sick, infirm, and aged." [ u There was 
not one feeble person among their tribes." ! (Psalm 
-v. 37.)] 

What then is the fair inference/ the unavoidable 



THE MARCH OF THE ISRAELITES. 



85 



inference, from this view of what " cannot surely be 
supposed " ? Why that it is a false view ; that the 
people were not inarching for war. Yet it does not 
follow that because all were not armed, that, therefore, 
none were armed : but, as in the case of the tents, con- 
sidered above, this is the Bishop's conclusion : — If 
there were not tents for all, there were not tents for 
any ; if there were not arms for all, there were not 
arms for any ! 

3. If it were not for the serious importance of the 
matters discussed, there would be something irresist- 
ably amusing in Dr. Colenso's mode of dealing with 
them. In commenting upon the journey of the 
Israelites from Rameses to Succoth, after dwelling 
upon the preparatory impossibilities, he says (p. 63) — 
" And now let us see them on the march itself. If we 
imagine the people to have travelled through the open 
desert, in a wide body, 50 men abreast, as some sup- 
pose to have been the practice in the Hebrew armies, 
then, allowing an interval of a yard between each rank, 
the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the 
road for about seven miles, and the whole multitude 
would have formed a dense column more than twenty - 
two miles long, — so that the last of the body could not 
have been started till the front had advanced that dis- 
tance, more than two days' journey for such a mixed 
company as this." " And the sheep and cattle — these 
must have formed another vast column, but obviously 
covering a much greater tract of ground in proportion 
to their number, as they would not march, of course, 



86 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



in compact order. Hence the drove must have been 
lengthened out for many long miles Yes : — and, then 
again, there were no people to drive and direct them ; 
for the whole multitude were engaged in filling up the 
Bishop's 22 miles! We cannot help thinking, how- 
ever, that if his lordship had been one of the rank: and 
hie, he would have disregarded military discipline as 
courageously as he has disregarded ecclesiastical dis- 
cipline ; and have got astride of one of these beasts, or 
even have jumped into a wagon. 

4. "The people, we are told, were supplied with 
manna. But there was no miraculous provision of 
food for the herds and flocks. They were left to 
gather sustenance, as they could, in that inhospitable 
wilderness " (p. 65) . Where is this recorded ? As 
" we are told " that the herds and flocks lived 40 years, 
we presume that, without being told, we may rea- 
sonably conclude that they were supported by food 
40 years. 

" But/' says the Bishop, (C it may be well now to 
quote one or two passages from other writers, which 
yet more plainly develope the absolute barrenness of 
this wild and desolate region, as it now appears, and 
as, we have every ground from the Bible itself to 
believe, it must then have appeared also" (p. 78). 
The Bishop then gives the following from Conder's 
cc Modern Traveller." 

cs In winter, when the whole of the Upper Sinai is 
deeply covered with snow, and many of the passes 
are choked up, the mountains of Moses and Saint 



THE BARRENNESS NOT ABSOLUTE. 



87 



Catherine are often inaccessible. Mr. Fazakerly, who 
ascended them in the month of February, found a 
great deal of snow, and the ascent was severe. It is 
difficult, he says, to imagine a scene more desolate and 
terrific, than that which is discovered from the summit 
of Sinai ... Of the view from Mount Saint Catherine 
he says, " The view from hence is of the same kind, 
only much more extensive than from the top of Sinai. 
It commands the two gulfs of Akaba and Suez ; the 
the island of Tiran and the village of Tor were pointed 
out to us ; Sinai was far below us ; all the rest, wher- 
ever the eye could reach, was a vast wilderness, and a 
confusion of granite mountains, and valleys destitute of 
verdure" 

Now in the first place, the Israelites were confessedly 
not there in Mr. Fazakerly's February: and in the 
next, we would ask— How can " we have every ground 
from the Bible to believe " in "the absolute barren- 
ness 33 of the region then, when the Bible expressly 
declares that a vast multitude were supported there for 
40 years ? Is not this substantially a declaration that 
the barrenness was not absolute ? In further support of 
this assertion of absolute barrenness, at the time of the 
sojourn of the Israelites, the Bishop quotes the follow- 
ing passage, from Dean Stanley, as to what the region 
is now, 33 when the fertilizing streams of water, "out of 
the rock of flint/' have probably ceased to flow, and the 
pools, in which the Israelites "washed their clothes,"* 
been dried up. " The general character of the wadys, 

* Exodus xix. 14. 



88 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



as well as of the mountains of Sinai is entire desoia- ; 
tion. If the mountains are naked Alps, the valleys are 
dry rivers. For a few weeks or days in winter , these 
wadys present, it is said, the appearance of rushing 
streams. But their usual aspect is absolutely bare and 
waste, only presenting the image of thirsty desolation 
the more strikingly, from the constant indications of 
water, which is no longer there. " 

Now every river-he&, however dry now, must once 
have been a channel for a river ; and where there is 
water there is, in general, verdure. The preceding 
quotation, while it testifies to the present "thirsty 
desolation/' equally testifies to " the constant indica- 
tions of water which is no longer there/' But even 
the desolation and barrenness, above described, is far 
from general : " The nomadic Bedouins are still now 
in the habit of cultivating the districts which appear 
suitable for agriculture ; they live during this time in 
tents, and change their abode after every harvest. 
Thus several tribes may be met with even now, which 
are at the same time nomads and agriculturists ; and 
nothing forbids us to suppose the same practice among 
the Israelites, during their sojourn in the desert, espe- 
cially as some parts of the peninsula are extremely in- 
viting to agriculture." 

This quotation from Kalisch is given by Dr. Colenso 
himself, for the purpose of shewing the inapplicability 
of the facts mentioned, to the case of the Israelites : 
" Spots of verdure/' says the Bishop, " which might be 
cultivated by a few hundreds of Arabs, would not 



WATER AND VERDURE IN THE DESERT. 

suffice for the wants of two millions of people. And 
even if it did, we have still, as before, to explain how 
the sheep and oxen lived on in the dreary waste." 

But how do the camels, &c., of the " few hundreds of 
Arabs " live on in that same dreary waste now ? And 
since spots of verdure, cultivated by a few hundreds, 
suffice for the few hundreds, spots cultivated by many 
hundreds would suffice for the many hundreds. The 
Bishop here assumes either that the spots actually 
cultivated by these few Arabs include all that can pos- 
sibly be cultivated; or that, of two millions of people, 
only a few hundreds cultivated. He assumes, too, all 
along, that every wady, river, and water-spring, that 
was there 3,000 years ago, is there precisely the same 
now : that as they are dry now they were dry then, — 
have been dry ever since, — in fact, that they were 
never otherwise than dry ; in other words, that river- 
channels never had rivers ! 

Now we wish it to be clearly understood that, in 
thus combating the Bishop's logic, we are not attempt- 
ing to verify " the Mosaic Story." The Bishop himself, 
though unconsciously, does that, in so far at least as 
he confirms the recorded fact of the great, but not 
universal, desolation and barrenness of the natural 
soil. To prove it to have been fertile, would be to 
prove the untruthfulness of the story. If there had 
been natural fertility, why should there have been any 
supernatural interposition— any miraculous provision 
of food and water? The more extensive and complete 
the barrenness, the greater the need for what the nar- 



90 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



rative declares to have been miraculously provided. 
This exceeding need, everything the Bishop adduces 
goes to shew to have actually existed. For his purpose 
he ought not to have done this : or, having done it — 
thus confirming the truth of a part of the story, he 
should have proceeded to shew that it was the other 
part that was false, — the supernatural supply of what 
nature could not furnish ; — to prove, in fact, that no 
Power could have " brought forth water out of the rock 
of flint, and fed His people in the wilderness with 
manna " (Deut. viii. 15, 16). But if, as indeed seems 
likely, the Bishop would concede this also, namely, 
that the people were miraculously fed, then it would 
remain for him to prove that the sheep and oxen were 
not miraculously fed, and therefore must all have 
perished of hunger; that is, that although the difficulty 
were overcome as to the people, it could not have been 
overcome as to the flocks and herds. 

He is certainly prudent enough to withhold the 
attempt at such a proof; and although he evidently 
does not believe what, for argument sake, he 'concedes, 
yet these concessions are fatal to his case. In reference 
to the statement — "It is well known that the in- 
habitants of these climates require comparatively but 
little food for their subsistence, and the support of 
their physical strength/' he asks—" Is the same true of 
the sheep and oxen of these climates V 3 And when it 
is said — "Abundance or superfluity would have led 
them away from their great aim, the conquest of 
Canaan, especially after so long wanderings; whilst 



HOW COULD THE CATTLE LIVE IN THE DESERT ? 91 

the scarcity of their subsistence kept their longing, after 
their better and permanent abodes, uninterruptedly 
alive/' he reiterates the old obstacle :— " Still the diffi- 
culty remains about the flocks and herds" (Part I. p. 78) . 

The fact is, that the Bishop ought to have been con- 
sent with his 'experimental proof, shewing the march 
out of Egypt " to be utterly incredible and impossible " 
(See ante, p. 5). But whether for the purpose of 
spinning out his book, or from an overweening con- 
fidence in his logical powers, he has conceded that, 
somehow or other, the Israelites did accomplish this 
incredible feat. Having thus assented to their sojourn 
in the wilderness, he is naturally led to inquire into 
the character of the region, and he finds it to be even 
now very much like what the Bible declares it to have 
been then. But the Bible does not directly and for- 
mally state that the sheep and oxen were fed during 
the forty years, only that they lived during the forty 
years. The omission cannot be denied : but it is not 
, regarded by most persons as a matter of such vital 1m- 
, portance to the integrity of the narrative as the Bishop 
| ostensibly considers it to be. As the people themselves 
were sustained by supernatural help during all these 
! years, we cannot but think that the flocks and herds 
were sustained by like help whenever there was need 
fo r it :— that pasturage was provided for them as well as 
; manna for their owners. Dr. Colenso may, if he please, 
infer, from the omission alluded to, that the sheep and 
oxen continued to live on without food ; but we prefer 
the lesser miracle. 



92 



MODERN' SCEPTICISM. 



Indeed, that pasturage was actually provided, even 
in the immediate neighbourhood of " desolate Sinai/' 
is distinctly implied in Ex. xxxiv. (2, 3) : — " And be 
ready in the morning, and come up in the morning 
unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in 
the top of the mount. And no man shall come up 
with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all 
the mount ; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before 
that mount" 

The prohibition not to feed at a specified place, 
clearly implies the existence of food at that place; and 
further, the designation of the locality where the flocks 
and herds were not to feed implies the existence of un- 
interdicted pasturage for them elsewhere. This pro- 
vender did not miraculously fall from heaven, as the 
manna did, but sprang up from the yielding earth; 
fertilized either by genial showers, or by the more 
abundant supply of water from the rocks. 

Wherever water naturally existed, there would be 
pasturage, then, as now ; and wherever water was 
supernaturally supplied, pasturage would follow.* " He 
clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave drink as out 
of the great depths. He brought streams also out of 
the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers." 



^ * Speaking of Wady Kyd. one of those " little spots of greater luxu- 
riance, which are found here and there in the Sinaitic peninsula," 
Burckhardt says—" It is, in fact, the most romantic spot I have seen in 
these mountains. The source of the rivulet is half an hour higher up 
the valley, the deep verdure of which forms a striking contrast with 
the glaring rocks, shewing that, wherever water passes in these districts, 
vegetatUm invariably accompanies it.'' 



PASTURAGE PROVIDED EVEN IN SINAI. 



93 



(Fs. lxxviii. 15, 16.) " He turned the wilderness into a 
standing water, and dry ground into water-springs." 
(Ps. cvii. 35.) This is surely enough : and sufficiently 
answers the question — How were the flocks and herds 
fed, when the natural verdure, for want of nature's own 
refreshing moisture, failed ? 

In reference to Burckhardf s testimony, quoted in 
the preceding foot-note, Dr. Colenso says,—" Bearing 
in mind that two millions of sheep and oxen, allowing 
a space of three feet by two feet as standing ground for 
each, would require, when packed together as closely 
as in a pen in a cattle market, nearly 300 acres of 
land, it seems idle to expend more time in discussing 
the question, whether they could have been supported 
in the wilderness by the help of such insignificant 
wadies as these, which a drove of a hundred oxen would 
have trampled down into mud in an hour." (Part I. 
p. 81.) 

The only Omnipotence which Bishop Colenso recog- 
nizes in his book, is what he calls ' ' the omnipotence of 
imagination," and it is this that serves him at every 
turn. It has here supplied the " two millions of sheep 
and oxen." Whence, but from his own unbridled 
imagination, could they possibly have come ? Does he 
think that the Israelites drove all these out of Egypt 
for mere amusement; or that they were, throughout 
their long and wearisome journey, too dainty to eat 
beef and mutton ? 

And how could he dare to say, with the text just 
quoted staring him in the face (Ex. xxxiv. 3) , that 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



* ( there is no provision whatever made in the Scrip- 
ture for the support of the cattle." ! (Part I. p. 70.) 

But it is impossible for Dr. Colenso, or for any one 
else, to prove by argument that any recorded events 
whatever could never have occurred, if he once admit 
the existence of Power to bring them about, in the 
Agent to whom the Record attributes them. Instead 
of the Bible, suppose he had taken " The Tales of the 
Genii " : is it not self-evident that he could never prove 
these tales to be incredible, except on the hypothesis 
that the existence of genii is incredible? Let him only 
concede the position that these preternatural beings, 
with all the powers with which the romance invests 
them, actually existed, — how can he possibly prove that 
they did not do what they are related to have done, and 
what, it is admitted, they could do ? To dispute the 
genuineness or authenticity of the History would be 
quite reasonable, as also to deny the accuracy of any 
specified translation of it from the original ; but what- 
ever is beyond the province of mere literary criticism 
cannot, on any rational principle, be disturbed. Incon- 
sistencies and contradictions may be fairly enough 
alleged, and discussed; and received verbal meanings 
and renderings philologically argued: but to deny 
the possibility of acts said to have been performed, by 
agency competent to perform them, and admitted to 
have been present, is simply absurd* 

* How Bishop Colenso lias succeeded in this other portion of his work- 
that devoted to what is more strictly Biblical criticism, the reader may 
see by consulting Mr. Wickes's Detailed Reply, already referred to ; and 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE CORRUPTED. 



95 



We feel constrained, however, to acquit Bishop 
•Colenso of any such absurdity in reference to the 
matter here discussed. But he has avoided it only by 
the unfair stratagem of altering the essential circum- 
stances of the narrative, and replacing them by others 
which that narrative not only does not acknowledge, 
but repudiates. The story he criticises is not that of 
the Exodus, but something quite different. He has 
changed the agency : — taken the work out of the hands 
of God, and put it into the hands of nature : — replaced 
the sovereign by the subject, the general by the 
subaltern, and criticised " the play of Hamlet with the 
part of Hamlet left out." His business was to prove 
that the Lord God did not bring the children of Israel 
out from Egypt; and that He did not sustain them in the 
wilderness ; whereas all he attempts is to shew that no 
other power could, — the very thing which the narrative 
distinctly and emphatically declares ; and to impress 
which fact on the mind was the very object for which it 
was written. 

It is plain, therefore, that the author eliminates the 
prime Agent in the recorded transactions — the avowed 
Agent, and the only competent Agent. And, in His 
stead, introduces another, a confessedly incompetent 
agent ; and, under this new condition, — this change of 

by perusing the tracts " by Two Working Men,'" entitled The Bible in 
the Workshop. 

Besides these excellent performances, there are no doubt many others, 
called forth by Bishop Colenso's rash publication, which satisfactorily 
dispose of the objections advanced in it; but which the present writer 
has not seen. 



96 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



hypothesis, lie comes, of course, to an adverse con- 
clusion. He certainly deals with a story of an Exodus, 
just as he before dealt with a story of a Mood ; hut he 
has no right to palm off these tales as the genuine 
stories of the Bible. The events recorded in the latter 
are perfectly credible — supernatural power being pre- 
sent : the like events, reiterated in the former, are per- 
fectly incredible — supernatural power being absent. The 
events in the spurious story must be incredible, if those 
in the real story are true. For, as already observed 
(p. 67) , it is as impossible for the acts of a supernatural 
Being to be other than supernatural acts, as it is for 
the processes of nature alone to be other than natural 
processes. We have quoted Dr. Colenso's assertion 
that " spots of verdure, which might be cultivated by 
a few hundreds of Arabs, would not suffice for the 
wants of two millions of people." This is no more 
true, than it is true that a few loaves and fishes, which 
might satisfy the hunger of five or six persons, would 
not suffice for as many thousands. Suppress Omni- 
potent Power, and both statements are true : introduce 
that Power, and both are false. 

A single oasis in the desert, continuously renewed by 
Almighty Power, like the "barrel of meal/' would 
never waste * and a single insignificant watercourse, 
replenished by the same Hand, like cc the cruse of oil," 
would never fail. 

In his own stories of a Deluge and an Exodus, Dr. 
Colenso may reject the hypothesis of an Omnipotent 
Being if he so please ; but he cannot fairly and faith- . 



DR. COLENSo's STORY NOT THAT OF THE BIBLE. 97 



fully discuss the Bible stories of these events, — he 
cannot discuss them at all, without admitting that hypo- 
thesis. Deny the essential conditions on which any 
story is based, or out of which the events arise, and 
you at once bar all discussion of the narrative itself:— 
you summarily reject it altogether. By changing the 
stipulated conditions, you may indeed shew that, in 
the altered circumstances, the events would be im- 
possible : but surreptitiously to thus corrupt the 
text of the story, in order to falsify its details, is a 
most unworthy stratagem to effect a most unworthy 
object. 

And the Bishop of Natal has repeatedly laid himself 
open to the charge of descending to this trick; and 
readers of his book have need to exercise vigilant 
caution against being entrapped by such devices : they 
must not only test the quotations from other writers, 
but also the quotations from even the Bible itself. 
What are we to think of merely the literary honesty of 
a writer Avho, to magnify the difficulties of a journey- 
ing community, oppressed with heavy burdens, points 
exclusively to untrained oxen, as their only means of 
relief; when the fact stares him in the face that they 
had asses as well ? 

Again, after commenting upon the testimony of 
Dean Stanley to the fact that around "desolate Sinai" 
there are oases rich in vegetation, he says "I have 
the more closely examined and carefully weighed the 
above arguments, because we may be certain that, by 
so able and earnest an advocate, everything has been 



H 



98 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



said that well could be said, to make it any way credi- 
ble, that the means of support could have been found 
for so large a body of cattle in the peninsula of Sinai, 
without a special miracle, of which the Bible says 
nothing". ! 

So far from this being the case, the Bible says every- 
thing, that a candid reader of it can require, to shew 
that the Exodus and sojourn in the wilderness were 
throughout a continuous miracle. But on what ground 
does the Bishop assume that there to as " so large a 
body of cattle in the peninsula of Sinai " ? The /air- 
inference from the narrative is, that, whatever may 
have been the extent of the flocks and herds upon 
quitting Egypt, the number must have very greatly de- 
creased even before reaching Sinai. There must indeed 
(according to the story, as well as according to com- 
mon sense) have been actual scarcity to a very painful 
degree, otherwise none of the Israelites could have ex- 
cusably murmured for flesh : nor, but for this palpable 
scarcity of flesh, would there have been any occasion j 
for the miraculous supply of quails (Ex. xvi. 13). The ! 
timely relief thus sent proved the pressure of the 
necessity, and the reasonableness of the complainings.*"" j 

It would be wearisome however to enumerate even a j 
tithe of the textual perversions, the false reasonings, j 
and the contemptible puerilities, with which the writ- 
ings of this author abound ; and to examine them at 
length : we shall therefore touch but very briefly upon 
one or two additional specimens. 

* See note 2, at the end of this section. 



ANIMAL-FOOD AND ANIMALCULE-FOOD. 



99 



5. He repudiates the notion that animal food was 
not consumed by the antediluvians, for he says ; (p. 221, 
Part IV.), "Even in the eating of vegetables by men, 
or grasses and leaves by animals — nay, even in the 
drinking of water, — there must have been abundant 
destruction of animal life." Must there ? Of necessity 
was it impossible that vegetables could have been cre- 
ated, without minute creatures, to feed upon them, 
being created too: — for water to have been created 
without a creation of animalcules also ? But, even 
admitting this inexorable necessity to have been laid 
upon the Creator, yet we think that Adam may have 
eaten of the vegetables, and have drunk of the waters 
of Eden, without disobeying any injunction to abstain 
from animal food ; and that Noah may have considered 
his liberty enlarged, as to his provender, when, in addi- 
tion to his former vegetable food, animal "meat" was 
permitted to him. And we are inclined to think that 
even Bishop Colenso himself, if ordered by his medical 
attendant to abstain rigidly from animal food for a 
week or two, would have no idea that he was violating 
the restriction by swallowing a glass of water, animal- 
cules and all. If the interdict, as to animal-food, 
were regarded as extending to animalcule-food, the 
patient would be inevitably doomed to certain starva- 
tion, in a very short time. Animalcules are even inhaled 
from the atmosphere, in the act of breathing. 

6. Quoting Genesis iii. 17, 18, he says (Part IV. 
p. 145) " Here the ground is represented as cursed for 
man's sake,andon thisaccount bearing briars and thorns, 



100 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



and requiring to be cultivated with hard labour. But 
geology shews that the state of things upon the Earth, 
before man appeared upon it, was just the same as it is 
now. There are no signs of any curse having passed 
upon the Earth. Thorns and briars were as plentiful 
in the primeval world as they are now. The same 
abundant crop of weeds would have grown up, under 
the same circumstances, then as now, on any ground un- 
cared-for. - " Now really what is the use of telling us 
that " Geology shews that the state of things upon the 
Earth before man appeared upon it, was the same as it 
is now"? Geology is not called upon to shew what 
the state of things was before the specified period, nor 
after: but at the very time. Geology is here sum- 
moned into the witness-box merely to declare that 
about " the state of things/' during the short period 
between man's creation and the fall, it has not a word 
to say : it must therefore " stand down." But the Bishop 
himself has something to say. " The same abundant 
crop of weeds would have sprung up, under the same 
circumstances, then, as now." True. 

7. In reference to the text — " They sewed fig-leaves 
together and made themselves aprons," will it be believed 
that the Bishop asks — not in joke — but seriously : — 
Where did they get needles and thread ? He quotes and 
endorses the language of Dr. Thomas Burnet, (Part 
IV. p. 151) : u The text says, they sewed together fig- 
leaves and made to themselves girdles. Here we have 
the first step in the art of sewing. But whence had 
they a needle, whence thread ? 93 Aye : and a thimble? 



EVE NON-PLUSSED FOR WANT OL' NEEDLE, ETC. 101 



Now let lis suppose that Eve's workbox really had a 
supply of these useful implements : — say Whitechapel 
sixes, and Arnott's patent sewing cotton : — Does the 
Bishop imagine that Eve would have been such a goose 
as to have used them for the purpose of stitching her 
fig-leaves together ? Why if, in her innocent ignor- 
ance, she had been so inconsiderate, she would have 
found her fragile workmanship soon give way ; and, 
after only a very short experience, would have dis- 
covered that her object was but half accomplished. 

8. Of course, as might be anticipated, the more 
complete clothing, supplied by God himself, is beset 
with like unconquerable difficulties ; not, in this case, 
from the want of needle and thread, but from lack of 
the raw material. "God gave them besides, coats, 
made, forsooth, out of the skins of beasts. But here 
again we run into difficulties. To soften the matter, 
let us substitute in the place of God an angel. An 
angel, then, slew and skinned the animals, or stripped 
the skin from innocent and living animals. But this 
is the business of a slaughterer, or butcher, not of an 
angel. Besides, through this slaughter, whole races of 
animals would have perished ; for it is not believed that 
more than two of each kind were created at first ; and 
one without the other, its mate, would have had no 
offspring." (Part IV., p. 151.) 

In the above extract, the author says— and says 
truly, "here again we run into difficulties" Yes: and 
he may expect always to run into difficulties, when he 
wilfully runs away from the Scriptures. That "God 



102 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



gave them coats made out of the skins of beasts," is an 
unauthorised statement of his own ; not a passage from 
the Bible. The uncorrupted text is this, " Unto Adam 
also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of 
skins, and clothed them." (Gen. iii. 21.) And the 
artful addition, " skins of beasts" howei'er flagrant the 
perversion, was seen to be necessary in order to pre- 
pare for the pre-determined conclusion; any conclu- 
sion, dishonoring to the Bible, would have answered the 
purpose equally well. But our object here is to shew 
the logical absurdity of all this. The writer believes, 
or affects to believe, that God created beasts at first : 
that He created bones, and flesh, and skin and all : 
that He created one skin for Adam : — Could He not 
create for him another ? What animal was " butchered " 
and skinned, to clothe the first sheep? And why 
should any be butchered and skinned to clothe the 
first man? Whatever the " coats of skins" (or 
coverings) were, they were assuredly not what this 
writer pretends to think they were, or the Bible itself 
would have told us so. And look at the palpable 
absurdity to which the author's gratuitous hypothesis 
leads him, and which he is so far from being conscious 
of, that he actually invites special attention to it, by 
printing it in italics, namely, " whole races of animals 
would have perished:' ! Xow as this result, confessedly, 
did not ensue, it necessarily follows that the hypothesis 
from which it is deduced is a false hypothesis. And 
as it is not the hypothesis of the story, the question as 
to whether that story be fact or fable, remains, in so 



iar 

r 



THE BISHOP^ SCIENTIFIC REASONING. 103 

as the above reasoning affects it, entirely untouched. 
The writer docs not appear to see that the perishing 
comes— not through anything recorded in the story, 
but solely and exclusively through the slaughtering he 
himself has added to it. 

Dr. Colenso's book is fertile in such examples as we 
have now given ; and those who are curious in absurdi- 
ties of this kind, are referred, for amusement, to the 
several parts of which it is composed. But there are 
other matters in these writings which require a more 
serious attention. In speaking of the Report of the 
Committee of Convocation, in the preface to Part II, 
he says, "They do not impeach the scientific truth, 
but only the orthodoxy of my reasonings We shall 
therefore devote a page or two here to the examination 
of the author's " science/' 

1. At page 110 of Part I, the Bishop says— 
"By the census of 1851 the population of England 
was 17,892,149, and by that of 1861, 20,061,725, 
besides 2,249,355 emigrants between March 31, 1851, 
and April 8, 1861. Some of these emigrants would, 
of course, have died in the interval, if they had 
remained in England. We may suppose that 2,000,000 
would have survived, making altogether the population 
in 1861, 22,061,725 ; so that the increase in 10 years 
upon 17,892,149 was 4,169,576, or more than 23 per 
cent." Now let us examine this piece of scientific 
reasoning. 

If the emigrants had remained at home their num- 
ber, 2,249,355, would have diminished to 2,000,000. 



104 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



Emigrants are usually able-bodied people, neither aged 
nor infirm. Every other 2,249,355 persons, who did 
remain in England, would have diminished, in like 
manner, to .2,000,000, or less. Whence then the great 
increase of " more than 23 per cent " ? 

2. At page 111, he says "If we take the certain his- 
torical datum in 130, (Xote), and assume that the 
Hebrew population increased, like that of England, at 
the rate of 23 per cent, in 10 years, then, reckoning 
the males as about half the entire population, we shall 
find that the 51 males in G. xlvi would have only 
increased in 215 years to 4,375 instead of 1,000,000. 
So, too, Dan's one son would have required 558 years 
to multiply to 104,500, the total number of Danite 
males existing at the time of the Exodus, according to 
IS . ii, 26, which we obtain by adding to the warriors 
there numbered, the due proportion of old men and 
boys/' 

It requires no science to see that this reasoning is 
wholly fallacious. Can any one of common sense 
believe that a healthy community consisting of 50 
males and 50 females can amount to only 123 persons 
in 10 years? Why only five healthy pairs of adults 
would very likely have this progeny of 23 in that time 
—as the commonest observation proves. And the 
doctrine that "51 males would have only increased in 
215 years to 4,375/' is as scientifically false and ridi- 
culous. Even upon his own wrong scientific principle, 

the Bishop's conclusion is incorrect. He says (£ The 

number in question will be represented mathematically 



THE BISHOPV ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES. 105 

by 51 (1-23) and log51 +2H xlog 1 '23= 1-7075702 
+ 21| x -0899051 = 3-6405298 = log 4375/' which is 
incorrect : this last number should be 4370J * 

3. At page 103, Part IV., we have the following 
startling statement. " It is difficult to realize to one- 
self the enormous size and distance from us of the 
fixed stars, and the awful solitude in which each sepa- 
rate star, and its little troop of planets, exists by itself, 
in the midst of the mighty universe/' ! 

Where and when, we would ask, did Bishop Colenso 
make the wonderful astronomical discovery that " each 
separate star " has "its little troop of planets "? If 
he did not make it himself, we are perfectly confident 
that nobody did : where are the details of this sudden 

* A numerical error like this, in any work Ml of algebraical symbols, 
we should not have thought it worth while to notice. But the above is 
the only bit of algebraical calculation in the book ; and finding how 
little in that book was to be depended upon, we suspected, as we have 
found, that this also was wrong. Even the Bishop's " certain historical 
datum" of 23 per cent, increase in the population of England from 1851 
to 1861, is greatly in error.— (See Moses and the Zulu, p. 61.) But if it 
had been correct, what possible analogy can there be between the rate 
of increase of Englishmen and that of the ancient Israelites, who " were 
fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied and waxed exceeding 
mighty; and the land ivas filled with them"? — (Ex. i. 7.) 

At a meeting of the Ethnological Society, June 21, 1864, " Sir James- 
Alexander said that when he was engaged in 1835 in the Caft're war, 
they met with a race of native warriors who offered their services to 
the' English as ' brothers,' and who stated that their tribe, numbering 
some 600, were descended from the ladies who were shipwrecked in the 
'Grosvcnor' East Indiaman. In 1836 he obtained a Dutch journal, 
giving an account of the transactions of the envoy sent to the Dutch 
Governor to rescue these ladies, but who, being married to native chiefs,, 
refused to return to their own country. Such an increase in 53 years 
was very remarkable, but was possible, allowing six children to each. 
of these six ladies." 



106 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



stride in science — which must have produced a sen- 
sation in all the observatories of Europe and America 
—recorded ? Is it possible that Dr. Colenso publishes 
it here for the first time, in a place where astronomers 
would never think of looking for it? Of all the 
myriads of stars, astronomers do not know if there be 
one attended by even a single planet ; and yet here is 
a writer boldly affirming that every fixed star has a 
troop of planets, — " each separate star, and its little 
troop of planets." ! 

If Bishop Colenso be really in a condition of mind 
which renders him fully accountable for what he writes 
(and there is reason to suspect otherwise), then we say 
that a more reprehensible instance of scientific guess- 
work, deliberately promulgated as established scientific 
truth, has rarely been witnessed. 

4. In reference to the inquiry as to " whether we 
are to believe that there was originally only one centre 
of creation, or more than one, the Bishop remarks 
(p. 133, Part IV.) : — " There arises also the question, 
whether all mankind are descended from one pair, or 
whether there may not be different races, generically 
alike, brothers, therefore, of one great family, having 
all the same precious gifts, of speech and thought, 
reason and conscience, proper to humanity, but yet 
from the first differing as species : — so that it will be no 
longer necessary to believe that the Bushman, Austra- 
lian savage, and Andaman Islander, are only degraded 
descendants of Adam or Noah, and that the European, 
Chinese, Negro, and North American Indian, are all 



THE ALLEGED DIFFERENT RACES OF MEN. 107 



derived from one pair of ancestors ; and it may be pos- 
sible to assume a different parentage from ours, for 
those ancient makers of flint-implements, who lived, as 
scientific men assure us, many thousands— perhaps, 
tens of thousands— of years before the Scripture epoch 
of the Flood. Such questions as these must now be 
open questions ; since we are no longer bound to be- 
lieve in the historical infallibility of this composite 
record, which lies before us in the book of Genesis/*' 
He then, in support of these views, refers to Prof. 
Agassiz : but why does he not quote Dr. Pritchard ? * 
This eminent and laborious investigator, establishes 
irrefragably the very opposite conclusion, as Dr. Colenso 
well knows. "The sacred Scriptures/' says this dis- 
tinguished philosopher, " whose testimony is received 
by all men of unclouded minds with implicit and reve- 

* The Bishop does refer to this distinguished writer once ; but in 
connection with a different inquiry— the Deluge. He says (p. 190, 
part IV.) " To assume with Pritchard a subsequent creation is unne- 
cessary and quite inadmissible ; for between the completed creation, 
.and the history which begins from thence, stands the Divine Sabbath, 
which excludes that after-creation." We cannot see that the reason 
here assigned for rejecting as " quite inadmissible " Dr. Pritchard's view 
has any connection with the matter at all. Dr. Pritchard writes as one 
who believes in the story of the Flood—" whereby the world that then 
was being overflowed with water perislied ; " and consequently that the 
face of the earth must have been reneiced. lie is not one of those of 
whom it was predicted " There shall come in the last days scoffers, 
sayiug— since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were 
from the beginning of the creation." 

" The Divine Sabbath," as Dr. Colenso is pleased to regard it, must 
have been repeatedly violated in God's dealings with the Israelites : and 
-on one occasion (the double supply of manna) it was violated expressly 
in order that the human Sabbath might be preserved unbroken ! (See 
p. 74.) 



108 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



rential assent, declare that it pleased the Almighty 
Creator to make of one blood all the nations of the 
earth, and that all mankind are the offspring of 
common parents" [Natural History of Man, p. 5). 
The learned author, after adverting to opinions adverse 
to the scriptural declaration, then adds — " I shall not 
pretend that in my own mind, I regard the question 
now to be discussed as one of which the decision is a 
matter of indifference, either to religion or humanity. 
But the strict rule of scientific scrutiny exacts, accord- 
ing to modern philosophers, in matters of inductive 
reasoning, an exclusive homage. It requires that we 
should close our eyes against all presumptive and 
extrinsic evidence, and abstract our minds from all 
considerations not derived from the matters of fact 
which bear immediately on the question. The maxim 
we have to follow in such controversies is fiat justitia 
mat caelum. In fact, what is actually true, it is always 
most desirable to know, whatever consequences may 
arise from its admission" (ibid. p. 7). The author 
then dwells upon the universally acknowledged fact 
that hybrids do not propagate : distinct species, as the 
horse and the ass, may unite, but their offspring never 
do. " Nothing is more evident than the fact that all 
the tribes both of the animal and vegetable worlds, 
are generally reproduced and perpetuated without be- 
coming blended and mixed together. The law of 
nature decrees that creatures of every kind shall in- 
crease and multiply by propagating their own kind, 
and not any other. If we search the whole world we 



DR. PRITCHARD OX THE UNITY OF RACES. 109 

shall probably find not one instance of an intermediate 
tribe produced between two distinct species, ascertained 
to be such. If such a thing were discovered, it would 
be a surprising anomaly" (p. 11). And he concludes— 
"It appears to be unquestionable that intermediate 
races of men exist and are propagated ; and that no 
impediment whatever exists to the perpetuation of 
mankind when the most dissimilar varieties arc blended 
together. We hence derive a conclusive proof, unless 
there be in the instance of human races an exception 
to the universally prevalent law of organized nature, 
that all the tribes of men are of one family" (p. 

#4). . ; 

The slave-holder has thus physical evidence m the 
breeding of Creoles, the offspring of the white man and 
the negro, that the African black is of the same blood 
as the European white. If the union of the two races 
produce offspring which themselves breed, all the facts 
of natural history compel the conclusion that the two 
races are of one and the same original stock. This is 
the conclusion we should come to in every other depart- 
ment of natural history. However dissimilar two ani- 
mals that paired might be, if their offspring propagated, 
we should infer, in conformity with Nature's general 
law, that the original parents were both of the same 
family, and could not possibly be of distinct species, or 
.stocks. Hybrid animals are universally sterile : " the 
perpetuation of hybrids, whether of plants or animals, 
so as to produce new and intermediate tribes, is impos- 
sible " (p. 16). Dr. Pritchard closes his elaborate 



110 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



researches thus : " We contemplate among all the- 
diversified tribes who are endowed with reason and 
speecln the same internal feelings, appetencies, and 
aversions; the same inward convictions, the same 
sentiments of subjection to invisible powers, and, more 
or less fully developed, of account ableness or respon- 
sibility to unseen avengers of wrong, and agents of 
retributive justice, from whose tribunal men cannot 
even by death escape. We find everywhere the same 
susceptibility, though not always in the same degree of 
forwardness or ripeness of improvement, of admitting 
the cultivation of those universal endowments, of open- 
ing the eyes of the mind to the more clear and luminous 
views which Christianity unfolds, of becoming moulded 
to the institutions of religion and of civilised life : in 
a word, the same inward and mental nature is to be 
recognised in all the races of men. When we compare 
this fact with the observations which have been hereto- 
fore fully established as to the specific instincts, and 
separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes 
of sentient beings in the universe, we are entitled to 
draw confidently the conclusion, that all human races 
are of one species and one family." The reader will 
bear in mind that this is the conclusion of an autho- 
rity of the highest value in reference to researches of 
this kind: — a conclusion arrived at by the strictest 
induction, from accurate and minute examination of a 
vast range of particulars : — the conclusion, in fact, of 
science properly so called, and not the baseless ima~ 

* Pritcliard's Natural History of Man, vol. ii., p. 714. 



THE FLINT-IMPLEMENTS OF AMIENS. 



Ill 



srinings of a man who talks about what " it mav be 
possible to assume." The Rev. B. W. Savile, quoting 
from Mr. Darwin, who says — "I should infer from 
analogy that probably all the organic beings which ever 
lived on this earth, have descended from some one pri- 
mordial form into which life M as first breathed by the 
Creator" — judiciously remarks: — "It is singular to 
observe the different phases which modern rationalism 
has undergone. If at one time it assumes mankind, 
with all animal and vegetable life, to have sprung from 
' some one primordial form/ at another time it declares 
that Adam could not have been the parent of the M'hole 
human race.""* It is proper to add here however, 
having introduced the above quotation from Darwin, 
that this distinguished naturalist goes on to say : — 
"But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, 
and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. 
The case is different M r ith the members of each great 
class, as the vertcbrata, the articulata, etc. ; for here, 
as has just been remarked, we have, in the laws of 
homology, embryology, etc., distinct evidence that all 
have descended from a single parent. " f 

As to "those ancient makers of flint-implements," 
whom Dr. Colenso assumes to have been human makers, 
science has not succeeded in tracing the " implements " 
to their real fabricators ; and the ablest investigators 
differ as to their character and origin. They are found 
in great abundance in the neighbourhood of Amiens 

* Revelation and Science. By the Rev. B. W. Savile, p. 209. 
f Darwin's Origin of Species, p. 519. 



112 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



and elsewhere, and have been sometimes carried away 
in basket-loads to repair the roads.* 

Man has been denned, in three words, as " A tool- 
making animal " — merely one, and that the lowest of 
• his assumed distinctive peculiarities, and then it is most 
illogically inferred that a tool-making animal must be 
man. But what evidence is there that the stone imple- 
ments, even conceding that they are of pre- Adamite 
origin, are tools ? Where are the constructions, or 
what trace is there of the mechanical operations which 
the use of tools imply — and which traces we should 
expect to present themselves in abundance where such 
myriads of tools are found ? It is a gratuitous assump- 
tion to designate them tools : they may be rather 
weapons, either for defence, or for the capture of prey, 
or for both. They may be no more tools, than the 
spider's web is a tool. Moreover : does a flint imple- 
ment, that we choose to call a hatchet, or a knife, 
necessarily imply a human fabricator ? Could not any 
brute, with but half the constructive intelligence or 
instinct of the spider, the bee, or the beaver, and 
having the hands of a monkey, rub or chip a piece of 
stone to an edge, and form for himself one of these 
rude weapons, if such a weapon were necessary to his 
support, or to his defence from attack ? Suppose the 
bee and the wasp had been pre-Adamite creatures, 
never reproduced; and that a fossil honeycomb, or the 

* For a full discussion of the latest discoveries and speculations re- 
specting the Abbeville nint-implements, see the Anthropological Eevieic. 

a publication vrhich appears to regard the interests of natural science 

(independently of all extrinsic considerations) as its sole function. 



FOSSIL BONES NOT HUMAN BONES. 



113 



fossil impression of a honeycomb, had been dug np : 
-what would most likely have been the inference from 
so beautiful a specimen of geometrical mosaic-work ? 
Should wc not find it difficult to escape the conclusion 
that the human hand, tools of human fabrication, and 
even high intellectual skill and science, had all been 
employed in the construction of a fabric of such exqui- 
site workmanship ? 

And as to fossil bones, however ancient the deposit 
in which they may be entombed ; and however more 
closely they may resemble the human anatomy, than 
even the chimpanzee and gorilla, it would be a viola- 
tion of all the principles of scientific induction for the 
philosopher who contemplates the carcase, to point to 
the thing and say : — " There's the creature into whose 
nostrils God breathed the breath of life, and he became 
a living Soul."* 

5. Upon Genesis ix., 13, " I do set my bow in the 

* Very recently one or two of the stone implements adverted to above 
have been discovered with, rude carvings or engravings upon tbem. The 
work must unquestionably bavc been executed by some creature having 
hands, and a certain amount of intelligence. If it could be clearly proved 
that the workmanship was pre-Adamite, it would be evidence sufficient 
that there once existed animals approaching nearer to man in bodily 
structure than the Ape, and perhaps nearer to him in intelligence than 
the Dog, or the Elephant. The actual discoveiy even of the skeleton of 
such a creature (still supposing him to have been pre-Adamite), would 
not in the least disturb the Scripture account of the subsequent creation 
of Man, who is sufficiently distinguished from " the brutes that perish, 1 ' 
in that account itself. It is more than probable, however, that too high 
an antiquity is attributed to the implements alluded to : but for the 
speculations, for and against, the reader is referred to the Anthropological 
Review. "We shall also enter more fully into this question of the antiquity 
of man in the sequel. 

I 



1U 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



cloud, and i£ shall be for a token of a covenant between 
me and the earth/' the Bishop comments thus : " The 
writer evidently intends to account in this way for the 
first appearance of the rainbow. This is the plain 
meaning of the language here used, which must be 
twisted to imply that, though the rainbow had often 
been seen before, — as it must have been, if there was 
rain and sunshine together before the Deluge, — it 
was then first, after the Deluge, made the sign of 
peace between God and man. The writer supposes it 
was then first set in the clouds after the Deluge."* 
(Part IV. p. 223.) It may be true that the rainbow 
" had often been seen before " ; — we think it extremely 
likely that it had often been seen before, but had it 
been seen during the Deluge ? Noah had probably 
looked out for it, hopefully, on many a terrific day, in 
the course of that long and dreary period ; and looked 
in vain for its gladdening indication. What must 
have been the emotions of himself and family when 
once again it had re-appeared ! What must have been 
the feelings of Noah when, contemplating then the 
surpassing beauty of the long-absent emblem, God 
said to him — " This is the token of the covenant which 
I make between me and you and every living creature 
that is with you, for perpetual generations 33 ! As if — 
pointing to the glorious object, He had said — There 
is a natural phenomenon : And as long as the laws 

* There are places on the present earth on which no rain ever falls, 
namely, the Desert of Sahara, part of the coasts of Peru, and several 
other spots. And rain is a rare occurrence in Egypt ; and -whenever it 
does fall, the ehewer lasts hut a few minutes. 



THE BOW OF THE COVENANT. 



115 



of nature last, so long' will tlic covenant 1 now make 
with you endure : Yea, " for perpetual generations." 

The Bishop lias truly said (and we wonder he should 
have recorded the fact) — " We must not forget that a 
rainbow may herald a tremendous coming storm, as 
well as illumine the dark cloud that has passed/' 
Yes : and it may have heralded the coming tremendous 
storm of forty days and forty nights. Would not such 
a rainbow have ever after been a portentous sign, — a 
source of fearful apprehension and terror to Noah and 
jhis family, hut for the comforting assurance which 
God had given them ? And it was, in fact, this fore- 
boding bow to which the attention of Noah and his 
family was more especially directed, as the token of 
the covenant : it Avas not the bow seen in the departing 
cloud, but that seen in the approaching cloud, that was 
the bow of the covenant : " It shall come to pass when 
I bring a cloud over the earth/' &c. (Gen. ix., 14.) 
Addressing the rainbow, well may Campbell exclaim — 

" When o'er the green nuclei u god earth 
Heaven's covenant Thon did'st shine, 
How came the world's grev fathers forth 
To watch thy sacred sign ! " 

And it is no disgrace to the philosopher, even in our 
own da)-, when he looks upon the foreboding rainbow 
with the eye of modern science, to look upon it also, 
as Noah did, — as the bow of promise; as the visible 
"token of the covenant," established long ages ago, 
between God and man. Science may inform him that 
there are the rain drops which " herald a tremendous 
coming storm"; but it is Faith alone that can assure 



116 



MODEKN SCEPTICISM. 



him that; however tremendous it may be, " then 
waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all 
flesh and that — " While the earth remaineth, seed 
time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and 
winter, and day and night shall not cease/'' 

8. But, as may be expected, Bishop Colenso's main 
scientific support is geology ; the teachings- of which, 
as well as those of the Bible, he perverts and misre- 
presents. He adopts the hypothesis, which men of 
science reject : — that light is an emanation from the sun 
(p. 100) ; and says : — " Geology teaches that, for count- 
less ages before man lived upon the earth, the sun 
beyond all doubt, was the centre and source of light 
and heat to the earth, and to its living creatures of all 
kinds, whose eyes were formed, just exactly as they 
are now, to receive its rays, — as well as to the succes- 
sive generations of plants, which grew in those pri- 
meval forests, to which are due the carboniferous for* 
mations." 

This is, at least, a perfectly unequivocal and explicit 
utterance. We have italicised three words in it, in 
order that the reader may compare them, at a glance,, 
with the three words italicised, by the author himself, 
in the following quotation, extracted from a little lower 
down on the same page (p. 102) . " Scientific geolo- 
gists maintain that, though there was, probably, a 
time when the temperature of the earth was more 
uniform than it is now, yet that this was not the case 
for long ages before the human period began; and 
farther, that at all times the earth, with its vegetable 



E \ I SE J X FE RENCES I'ROM GE OLOGY. 



117 



products, and living creatures of all kinds, has been, 
to all appearance, dependent upon the sun for light 
and heat, just exactly as now/' 

How can science teach, beyond all doubt, what scien- 
tific men teach to be only to all appearance, true ? 

7. In reference to the earth being " without form 
and void, desolation and emptiness/' it is affirmed 
(p. 97, Part IV.) that "Geology proves irresistibly 
.that no such a state of things immediately preceded 
the epoch fixed in the Bible for the creation of man." 
Geology neither proves, nor makes the attempt to 
prove, any such thing. And, notwithstanding the 
boldness of the assertion, we think no reader of it 
.can be so weak as to imagine that any geologist would 
.endorse the preposterous doctrine that, a week's inter- 
mission, or suspension of, the stream of life— a single 
week's, or even a year's desolation and emptiness of 
the earth's surface, could be detected by any explora- 
tion of that surface whatever. And, for aught that 
the Bible states to the contrary, the " desolation and 
.emptiness" need not have continued a single day. 
Look at the text itself :— there is not a word as to how 
long the earth remained " without form and void." It 
merely informs us of the shapeless and barren condi- 
tion of our planet immediately before the creative acts 
of the six days commenced. The objector acknow- 
ledges this; and yet has the temerity to affirm that 
" Geology proves irresistibly that no such a state of 
things immediately preceded the epoch fixed in the 
Bible for the creation of Man " I There is not a geolo- 



118 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



gist in the world who would assert that his science can 
enable him to discover whether the continuity of 
animal and vegetable existence on this earth has suf- 
fered interruption (though but for an hour) at any- 
remote epoch whatever. Everybody knows that in 
geological speculations hours, and days, and weeks, and 
even individual years, are (relatively) infinitesimal por- 
tions of time too minute for geology to take any account 
of at all : the chronological units of its calendar are not 
days, and weeks, and years, but tens of centuries. 

According to Dr. Colenso, " Geology teaches that 
ravenous creatures preyed upon their fellow-creature J 
and lived upon flesh, in all ages of the world's past 
history, just exactly as they do now " (p. 108) . But 
Geology teaches no such thing : it is incompetent 
to teach anything whatever, respecting either the 
animal or the vegetable kingdom, during that limited 
period of time which lies between the Bible-epoch of 
the Creation and that of the Deluge. And the Bishop 
will be utterly unable to point out to his readers any 
geological work in which the peculiarities of the earth's 
fauna and flora are accurately described at any remote 
epoch whatever, and which also as accurately describes 
the animal and vegetable peculiarities 1000 or even 
2000 years after that epoch : for during such a com- 
paratively brief interval as this, Geology makes no 
record of general terrestrial changes at any one 
period of its vast chronology. 

But we tire of our distasteful task ; which we close 
with a word or two of admonition to the reader. 



ADMONITORY REMARKS. 



119 



Let him remember that the present controversy is 
not about matters of science merely. Our science, like 
that of our predecessors, may in many particulars, be 
frong. It may, perhaps, be put right when we have 
passed away ; and then whether it be right or wrong 
will be of not the slightest moment to us. But it is 
the truth of the Bible that is at stake. Should there 
indeed be, for each of us, an endless hereafter— a 
future eternity either of misery or of happiness, the 
Bible is the only monitor that can effectually warn us 
off the fatal shoals of the former, and guide us safely 
to the tranquil shores of the latter. It is the only 
chart, in our passage across this turbulent gulf of 
Time,' which we have the power and the privilege to 
consult. The erasure, or change of but a single course 
in it may imperil the voyage. So obscured, and 
defaced, and altered, it may indeed yet seem fitted to 
direct us, smoothly enough, even till we fancy we can 
descry the hoped-for port, But if it should, thus 
vitiated, represent to be icrra-firma, that which is but a 
quick-sand, or a fog-bank, the discovery of the error 
may be made too late ; and we may be aroused to a 
sense of our perilous condition only by the appalling 
cry, — " Breakers a-head ! 33 



Note 1. 

In the foregoing Essay, we have taken no no dee of 
Bishop Colenso's reproduction of Thomas Paine's 
Elohistic and Jehovistic theories ; nor of the same 



120 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



notorious writer's irreverent absurdities about the 
authorship of the Pentateuch — and about Moses re- 
cording his own death, etc. — all of which the Bishop 
has repeated, in substance, without the slightest 
acknowledgment of the source whence he has so largely 
drawn. " Take away " — says Paine — " take away from 
Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on 
which only the strange belief that it is the word of 
God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis 
but an anonymous book of stories, fables, traditionary 
or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."* Paine 
was abundantly refuted by Watson ; and the refutation 
of Thomas Paine is also the refutation of Bishop 
Colenso. If the latter had profited as much from 
The Apologij for the Bible of Watson, as he has 
profited, in a sad sense, from the Age of Reason, of 

* To this specimen of the Age of Reason, the following is a pretty 
close parallel : Take away from the ancient hook called The Elements of 
Geometry, the belief that Euclid was the author, and there remains 
nothing of the Elements of Geometry " but invented absurdities or of 
downright lies." [It is proper to state that this parallel was employed 
in a book published in 1831, by John Thomas, intituled — The Challenge 
of a Deist accepted.'] Some of the writings of Paine exhibit a degree of 
logical acumen greatly superior to that possessed by most of his disciples 
and admirers, including even the Bishop of Natal : but that the Divine 
authority of the Pentateuch must be rejected as soon as it is believed 
that Moses was not the only inspired penman who wrote it, is anything 
but a logical conclusion. The authenticity of the Writings is abundantly 
attested by a greater than Moses. Even could it be proved that not a 
single line of the Pentateuch was actually written by Moses, the proof 
would indeed affect the genuineness and authenticity of the title-page, 
but nothing more. The Books of Euclid, are known to have been not all 
written by Euclid himself ; but they will be referred to, as such, to the 
end of time ; and every human being will always know what the writ- 
ings are which are thus designated. 



INSTANCES OF THE BISHOP'S TREATMENT OF TEXTS. 121 

Thomas Paine, his examination of the Pentateuch 
would, at least, have reflected no discredit on his 
character and calling. Those who wish to see the 
Bishop ably answered on the above-mentioned points, 
should read Watson's book, jnst alluded to ; as also the 
Rev. Mr. Wickes's Moses or the Zulu and like- 
wise The Bible in the Workshop. And in addition to 
these, the Rev. Daniel Moore's recent publication On the 
Divine authority of the Pentateuch, and an instructive 
Paper, by the same author, in The Christian Observer 
for May, 1861. 

Note 2. 

We have adverted at page 98 to Bishop Colenso's 
not unfrequent practice of tampering with the texts of 
the Bible, either by the suppression of those portions 
which would render his comments and inferences 
nugatory, or by the insertion of certain words, foreign 
to the Record, which arc seen to be necessary to effect 
the purpose he has in view ; the purpose, namely, of 
making the sacred narrative appear to be incredible 
.and fabulous. He first fabricates absurdities, and 
forthwith sets about exposing them. 

He devotes one of his chapters (Chap, vi.) to the 
discussion of the following text : — 

" And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with 
his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his 
dung, even the whole bullock, shall he [the Priest] 
carry forth without the camp, unto a clean place, where 
the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood 



122 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



with fire. Where the ashes are poured out, there shall 
he he burnt."" (Lev. iv. 11, 12.) The Bishop affirms 
this text to convey that " the refuse of these sacrifices 
would have had to be carried by the Priest himself 
(Aaron, Eleazar, or Ithamar, — there were no others,) 
a distance of three quarters of a mile. . . In fact, 
we have to imagine the Priest himself to carry, on his 
back on foot, from St. Paul's to the outskirts of the 
Metropolis, the skin, and flesh, and head, and legs, 
and inwards, and dung, even the whole bullock." 
And the Bishop shews, of course, the impracticability 
of this amount of individual labour.*" 

But take from the scriptural directions what the 
Bishop has unwarrantably put in, — the words which 
we have here distinguished by italics ; that is, remove 
the gloss, and you remove the difficulty. Everybody 
knows that it is the doctrine — not only of all our law- 
courts, but of common sense, that what a man directs 
to be done by his appointed agents, lie does, virtually, 
himself : and this too is the declared doctrine of the 
Bible. Thus (Gen. xli., 48, 49) : C( And he [Joseph] 
gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were 
in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the 

* By aid of his ubiquitous servant-of -all-work. Arithmetic, the Bishop 
makes the distance of porterage to be " a distance of six miles." These,, 
with the other multifarious labours of the priesthood, are certainly very 
astounding ; but they may be paralleled by modern facts, which are un- 
doubtedly historical. Sir Christopher Wren, for instance, is affirmed to 
have bxiilt St. Paul's Cathedral and the Monument of London ; a stu- 
pendous task for one man to have accomplished: yet the history of 
modem London records it, and people in general regard the statement 
as true. 



ALLEGED PORTERAGE OF THE PRIESTS. 123 

cities : the food of the field, which was round about 
every city, laid he up in the same/' 

" And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, 
very much, until he left numbering : for it was with- 
out number/' Now Joseph just as much did all this 
himself as did the Priest carry the bullock himself, or 
as did Sir C. Wren build St. Paul's himself; and 
Bishop Colcnso, to be consistent, must admit that 
Joseph is here declared to have accomplished this 
herculean labour by himself; and as no mention is 
made, in either of the two cases, of subordinate agents 
acting by the direction and under the control of their 
official superior, we have no doubt that, in the latter 
of these cases, as in the former, the Bishop would aver 
the narrative to record this incredible feat ; and that 
Joseph carried all the corn himself, " on his back " !' 
But what can the Bishop say to the following most 
explicit statement ? — 

" And the keeper of the prison committed to J oseph's 
hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and 
whatsoever they did there he was the doer of it." 
(Gen. xxxix, 22.) 

In defiance of all this, however, the Bishop insists 
that the duties of every office must all have been per- 
formed by the head official himself, without any subor- 
dinate assistance. According to him, the Priests were 
occupied, without a moment's intermission, in the most 
wearisome labours, during the whole of the twenty- 
four hours; having no time at their disposal for 
either eating or sleeping ; and yet that (according to 



1.24 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



him) they each managed to consume several hundred- 
weight of solid food per day I* (See chapters xx, xxi, 
Part I.) How amazing the credulity which believes 
that there ever could have existed any man, however 
vile as an imposter, "who could pen such egregious 
absurdities in the expectation of being believed ! As 
well might we suppose a person to record, as fact, that 
the letters, from the chief office in London, were all 
delivered (inland and foreign) by the Post-Master- 
General personally, and expect future ages to believe 
him. The Bishop — having sufficiently descanted upon 
the enormous labour thus devolving upon the Priest 
personally, and the formidable obstacles to the preser- 
vation of cleanliness, in the vast encampment, which 
the people generally must have had to contend with — 
goes onto say, — "But how huge does this difficulty 
become, if, instead of taking the excessively cramped 
area of 1652 acres, less than three square miles, for 
such a camp as this, we take the more reasonable 
allowance of Scott, who says, 'this encampment is 
computed to have formed a moveable city of twelve 
miles square.' In that case the offal of these sacrifices 
would have had to be carried by Aaron himself, or one 
of his sons, a distance of six miles ; and the same diffi- 
culty would have attended each of the other transactions 
above-mentioned .... we have to imagine half a 
million of men going out daily — the 22,000 Levites 
for a distance of six miles — to the suburbs for the com- 

* Exclusive of the poultry: "each priest," says the Bishop (besides 
the more substantial food just named, " would have had to eat daily more 
.than 88 pigeons for his own portion." (P. 128.) 



THE BISHOP^ ESTIMATE OE THE ENCAMPMENT. 125 



mon necessities of nature ! The supposition involves, 
of course, an absurdity. But it is our duty to look 
plain facts in the face." 

It is our duty too, to raise the veil, in which she is 
disguised, and look plain fiction in the face ; and we 
here propose to shew what it is that the arithmetical 
garb, with which the Bishop has invested the present 
subject, really conceals. He forms his first arithmetical 
hypothesis on the consideration that " we cannot well 
allow for a living man, with room for his cooking, 
sleeping, and other necessaries and conveniences of 
life, less than three or four times the space required 
for a dead one in his grave : 33 he thus takes three 
times 6 feet by 2 feet, the size of a coffin for a full- 
grown man, that is, 36 square feet for each person, and 
concludes, — and very reasonably, that this space being 
exclusively occupied by each person, would render the 
encampment one of great inconvenience. This hypo- 
thesis therefore (in so far as extent of ground is con- 
cerned) he very properly rejects; and assumes what he 
regards as " the more reasonable allowance of twelve 
miles square 33 — that is, of 144 square miles, for the 
whole area of the camping-ground ; and thus deduces, 
for the 22,000 Levites, a distance of six miles to the 
suburbs for the common necessities of nature. 

Now 144 square miles contain 4,014,489,600 square 
feet, which subdivided equally among 2,000,000 of 
people, gives a space of 2007J square feet to each 
person. 

The great diniug-saloon of the largest steam-ship* 



126 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



ever built — (before the Great Eastern) , the Atlantic, 
was 60 feet by 42, so that the area was 2520 square feet : 
three times this would be an area of 7560 square feet. 
We have just seen that if Bishop Colenso had had to 
mark out the camping-ground of the Israelites, he 
would have allotted to every four persons a space of 
.2007J X 4 = 8029 square feet, which considerably 
exceeds 7560 square feet, the measurement of three 
saloons, each equal in size to that of the Atlantic 
steamer. And this extent of space he affirms to be 
but a " reasonable allowance 33 for a man and his wife 
and two children, — a space fully equal to the area of one 
of even the very largest of our London churches ! Yet 
without this lavish and preposterous allowance of 
camping-room, what becomes of the Bishop's "six 
miles" and of the " huge difficulty 33 of " the people 
having to carry out their rubbish, and bring in their 
daily supplies/' &c. ? " The supposition [his suppo- 
sition, not the Scripture narrative] involves, of course, 
an absurdity." A tenth part of his "reasonable 
allowance 33 would be space amply sufficient for every 
possible requirement, — sufficient for surrounding en- 
closures, securing family and domestic privacy — suffi- 
cient for intersecting roadways, and for all sanitary 
arrangements. The encampment was abundantly sup- 
plied (as the history tells us) with all needful vessels 
and utensils ; and the warriors only were commanded to 
repair without the camp, for the purpose of ensuring 
the greater cleanliness within. The Bishop remarks 
that "there were the aged and infirm, women in 



INJUNCTIONS AS TO CLEANLINESS. 



127 



childbirth^ sick persons, and young children, who could 
not have done this." He does not sec that these would 
naturally be left to the care of the Avomen, who would 
perform for the helpless all needful offices, and that they 
themselves — with the domestic accommodation just 
adverted to — would never have occasion to repair to the 
outskirts of the camp. No injunctions as to cleanliness 
were laid upon the women, simply because no such in- 
junctions were necessary. Had any been needful, the 
injunction would, no doubt, have been an interdict : — 
they would have been forbidden, to go outside the camp : 
but such a breach of decency and propriety being in- 
consistent with the characteristic modesty of civilized 
woman, any legal enactment to provide against it would 
have been superfluous and useless. 

TTe have entered into these details for the purpose of 
clearly establishing, by the examination of a fair sample 
of his writings, the charge laid against the Bishop, at 
page 98 of misrepresenting and perverting the state- 
ments of Scripture. By some unaccountable fatalism, 
he seems to be impelled — no matter whether by fail* 
means or foul— to make, not to prove, the Mosaic narra- 
tive to be ridiculous and absurd. Notice the way in 
which he plots out the ground for the encampment of 
the Israelites,— a way which could be adopted only for 
the purpose of covering the most extensive area, and of 
multiplying inconveniences to such a degree as to 
make the performance of the ordinary duties and neces- 
sities of life intolerably irksome. He separates husband 
from wife, and mother from daughter; isolates each 



128 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



individual, and assigns a distinct dwelling to every 
member of the immense community. Each, for him- 
self, is to have " room for his cooking, sleeping, and 
other necessaries and conveniences of life" ! Were 
such camp-arrangements ever heard of before ? Yet 
these are the arrangements the Bishop requires us to 
accept in the very hypothesis with which he starts 
p. 38 (Part I.) ; and, of course, the absurdity of the 
hypothesis enters the conclusion. Seizing upon a mere 
slip of the pen of the Rev. Thomas Scott, the Bishop 
quotes that author in support of his own most exagge- 
rated estimate of the extent of the encampment — " Scott 
says this encampment is computed to have formed a 
moveable city of twelve miles square." We have not 
the slightest doubt that Scott meant twelve square 
miles, a very different thing ; for he was neither insane 
nor dishonest. What may be the condition of the 
Bishop of Natal we cannot do more than conjecture. 
We leave the reader himself to determine whether the 
writings we have here examined indicate mental or 
moral aberration, — whether the grave faults with which 
they are replete are to be laid to the charge of the head 
or of the heart — and whether the writer be not a fitter 
subject for Dr. Forbes Winslow than for Convocation. 

Those who have read the promises which Bishop 
Colenso makes in the preface to his First Part, must be 
astonished to find, upon an examination of the work 
itself, how completely those promises have been broken ; 
and how totally opposed to his own declared wishes 
the execution has proved to be. He savs " I do not 



THE BISHOP'S PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES. 129 



wish to take the reader by surprise or to entrap him 
"by guile. I wish him to go forward with his eyes 
open, and to watch carefully every step of the argu- 
ment, with a full consciousness of the momentous 
r: suits to which it leads, and with a determination to 
test severely, with all the power and skill he can bring 
to the work, but yet to test honestly and fairly, the 
truth of every inference which I have drawn, and every 
conclusion to which I have arrived." And this was 
written after the paralogisms, the perversions, the 
misrepresentations, and the glaring absurdities, in that 
First Part, had all been penned and printed ! The appa- 
rently earnest declaration of honesty and fairness here 
made may certainly have induced some readers to 
receive his conclusions Avithout scrutinizing the me- 
thods by which they have been reached; but the 
general invitation, fe to test them severely," cannot, 
surely, have been given in the hope, or even in the ex- 
pectation that it would be accepted. It is hard to 
believe that he can sincerely have wished any such 
thing. 

The Bishop has undertaken a task to which — whether 
from mental or moral infirmity— he has proved him- 
self to be wholly incompetent : the evidence he offers 
in support of the notion, which has somehow or other 
.got into his head, that the Mosaic Story is unveracious, 
breaks down, the most signally, precisely in those 
parts of it which he appears, from his appeals " to 
modern science," to regard as the most invulnerable. 
Abundant evidence, but of a very different kind, the 

K 



130 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



work under notice does certainly furnish : — it is tins : 
that, whether the Pentateuch be true or false, the 
Bishop of Natal is not the man to discuss the question 
either one way or the other. And believers in Revela- 
tion have reason to rejoice that he did not exercise 
his pen on their side. 

But science, in whatever hands, will ever prove 
inadequate to deal with the direct acts of Deity in the 
material world. Physical science has to do solely and 
exclusively with events which arise from natural causes 
alone. It cannot tell anything as to the past, nor 
predict anything as to the future, in regard to occur- 
rences brought about by supernatural power. These 
are not the objects of science. They must be received,, 
— if received by man in his present condition at all, as* 
articles of Faith. " When this mortal shall have put 
on immortality/' the case will be different : — 
" What I do thou knowest not now, but thou 
shalt know hereafter." ( John xiii. 7.) 



SECTION V. 



ON THE AUTHORITY OF " PHYSICAL SCIENCE J AND ON 
SOME MODERN PERVERSIONS OF THE TERM. 

It is so common in the present day to regard the 
decisions of physical science as absolutely final, in 
reference to all controversies respecting whatever has 
taken place in the natural world, that it becomes a 
matter of some importance to ascertain the real claims 
to authority of what is thus considered to be an un- 
erring tribunal, the justice of whose verdicts no one can 
reasonably question. What is declared to be adverse 
to modern science, is virtually declared to be, of ne- 
cessity, adverse to truth ; and is therefore to be rejected 
as utterly fabulous. But the wisdom of such sum- 
mary rejection, in every case of this kind, becomes 
very questionable when we reflect that much that 
was modern science at one time, is equally rejected by 
what is modern science now ; and that very possibly 
the science of our successors may doom much which 
enters that of the present day to a similar fate. 

In its strict meaning, the term Physical Science is 
comprehensive of only what we really know respecting 
the external world, to the exclusion of everything that 
we merely suppose. Its range is limited to that of 



13.2 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

actual observation and experiment ; and to such de- 
ductions from these, as to physical causes, as Are know 
to be the true originators of the several phenomena. 
But in reference to these latter — the determination of 
physical causes, this limitation of meaning in the term 
(C Science/' is very often transgressed ; and speculation 
and conjecture, as to what may be, allowed to occupy 
the place of unattainable certainty, as to what actually 
is, or must be. 

It is more especially in this hypothetical portion of 
science, as indeed might be expected, that chauges are 
from time to time introduced as knowledge advances ) 
and it is the necessity for these changes that so often 
renders the science of one age obsolete and worthless 
in that which immediately succeeds, even though the 
new facts, gathered from more extended observation, 
may be comparatively but few and unimportant. 

If all that goes by the name of physical science 
were so much unquestionable truth, so far as its affirmed 
revelations reach, then our progress from time to time 
would be actual additions to treasures already accumu- 
lated : every new acquisition would be so much added ; 
but nothing would be subducted from the stock in 
hand. 

And in what is purely observational, such is indeed 
the case : all that the senses have unmistakeably wit- 
nessed, or that actual experiment has unmistakeably 
disclosed, and which has been faithfully recorded, takes 
a permanent place in the annals of science, as estab- 
lished truths which no future investigations can dis- 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA EVOKED BY MIND. 133 



turb ; for they rest upon evidence of the most conclu- 
sive kind — the evidence of the senses. 

The accumulated knowledge of Nature's phenomena 
thus obtained, and the confidence we have — a confidence 
justified by all past experience — that the same pheno- 
mena will always recur under the same antecedent 
circumstances, furnish the materials, and stimulate the 
activity and inventive ingenuity of man in the applica- 
tion of them, in all those contrivances and construc- 
tions which are such inestimable boons to civilised life, 
and which confer such permanent benefits upon all 
social communities. 

Materials which nature has placed apart, and sepa- 
rated by wide intervals, man's activity has brought into 
conjunction ; and his ingenuity and skill have so com- 
bined them that the distinct properties of each thus 
blended, and operating in concert, give rise to pheno- 
mena often but little anticipated ; and never such as 
nature alone would have spontaneously exhibted. Hence 
the sciences of chemistry, electricity, magnetism, etc., 
and all the important practical results which have flowed 
from them. On the other hand, what nature presents 
• in a composite form, man decomposes ; and, here too, 
often arrives at new and unexpected phenomena. The 
experimental labours of the early alchemists, though 
quite abortive as to the objects of their search, resulted 
in many unlooked for and valuable chemical truths. 

The decomposition of light, once thought to be homo- 
geneous, displays, in the gorgeous colours of the pris- 
matic spectrum, a beautiful instance of distinct phe- 



134 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

nomena, all hidden, as it were, in the compound 
material. 

In the former class of cases, human power may be 
said actually to add to the phenomena of nature : in 
the latter class, it unfolds, liberates, and renders cog- 
nisant by our senses what, but for the exercise of mind 
upon matter, would have ever remained concealed, and 
therefore unknown. But in both classes of cases the 
spontaneity of the operations of material nature is 
interfered with : what is totally distinct from material 
nature has entered its territory, and there exercised a 
coercive authority over its subjects, disturbing their 
repose and rousing them, as it were, to the putting 
forth of those dormant energies with which they have 
been ever endowed. 

There are regions, however, secured by impassable 
barriers from all inroads of this kind : — remote and 
extensive domains where nature rules with undisturbed 
sway ; and in reference to which man can only stand 
aloof, in the humble attitude of a powerless spectator. 
The phenomena of the heavens are utterly beyond his 
control : he can neither hasten nor retard them. But 
he can observe them ; and thus, in time, discover the 
laws implied in their uniform order of succession, and 
in their regularly recurring cycles. And, for all his 
practical purposes here, this is enough. It would 
certainly gratify an enlightened curiosity to attain to 
farther information respecting the character of those 
far-off bodies whose shapes and movements only we 
can contemplate : — to learn, for instance, how it is 



OFFICE OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



135 



that the great source of heat above us remains unex- 
hausted— how its fuel is supplied, and whence it is 
.derived ; to discover by what creatures, if by any, the 
planets are inhabited, and with what kind of vegetation 
the surfaces of those planets are clothed, what minerals 
.repose beneath, and what aerial beings fly above. But 
.since these, and many other particulars, lie beyond 
.the sphere of observation, science knows nothing about 
:them, and therefore has nothing to communicate respec- 
ing them. Conjecture and imagination may people 
.these worlds as they please :— anything may be sup- 
posed, where nothing is known. 

Physical science can speak with authority only in 
reference to what is actually seen or heard— measured 
■ or weighed : — in fact, only as to so much of nature as 
addresses itself to our senses, — in other words, observed 
phenomena. It is not however the mere noting of these, 
.as so many distinct and isolated appearances, that con- 
stitutes the business of physical science ; for in this 
.exercise alone science can be scarcely said to come into 
play at all. Its more especial office is to discover, of 
.every phenomenon, — first, what is its invariable ante- 
cedent ; and then to trace the more remote antecedent 
of that ; and so on: and the connecting links of the 
series being thus determined, to discover, finally, from 
what permanent principle, or law of nature, the entire 
group is the necessary consequence ; or, at least, to 
what such general principle the phenomena may be 
referred as their physical cause : — in fact, to find out 
what the primitive physical agency actually is that 



136 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



originates the several phenomena we observe, or, at 
all events, what agency, whether unquestionably that 
of nature or not, is competent to evoke those pheno- 
mena : — adequate to the work actually performed. If 
this knowledge be attained — if we arrive at the real 
source of the phenomena in question, or only at a 
general principle adequate to account for all the ob- 
served facts, then, by investigating the potentialities of 
that prime agent, and, by reasoning, deducing from 
them the results they would give in cases not originally 
contemplated, we may become able even to anticipate 
phenomena additional to those already observed. 

It is as if certain geometrical properties being made 
known to us, we were to proceed to search out the 
figure to which those properties belong : if we succeed, 
then a direct study of that figure may bring to light 
many other properties in addition. And, indeed, there 
is a good deal of analogy between the two problems, j 
namely — 1. Given a certain number of phenomena, all I 
affirmed to be the offspring of some one primary phy- ] 
sical cause, to discover that cause ; and — 2. Given a 
certain number of geometrical properties, all residing 
in the same figure, to discover that figure. In the \ 
solution of each there is hazard of a wrong determi-- j 
nation : in geometry figures very unlike each other- 
have nevertheless certain properties in common — the 
ellipse and hyperbola, for instance ; and so in physics-; f 
causes very different may each be assigned which 
equally suffice to account for the same limited series of 
phenomena. Witness the two distinct hypothesis 



PHYSICAL HYPOTHESES PROVISIONAL ONLY. 137 

which equally explain the more ordinary phenomena 
of light. 

But the physical cause which philosophers are thus 
led to assign for any class of natural phenomena is 
always regarded by them as only provisional; for how- 
ever satisfactorily it may account for whatever has 
been Observed, yet phenomena thereafter noticed, and 
clearly referrible to the same real cause, may fail to 
be explicable by the hypothetical one previously as- 
signed; in which case the hypothesis must be modified 
so as to include the new facts, or else rejected alto- 
tier. And thus there is always more or less of un- 
certainty as to the real existence in nature of what 
we often assume to be the physical causes of pheno- 
mena; or as to whether our hypothetical cause is com- 
prehensive of all the phenomena, in any case, or is 
only a portion, as it were, of a whole— a part— cause. 
One of the most comprehensive and least doubtful of 
hypothetical causes is that which is designated the 
law of gravitation ; yet see with what truly scientific 
caution Sir John Herschel speaks even of that. 

" There is one feature in physical astronomy which 
renders it remarkable among the sciences, and has 
been the chief, if not the only, source of the perfection 
it has attained. It is this— that the fundamental law 
embracing all the minutiae of the phenomena so far as- 
we know them, presents itself at once, on the consi- 
deration of broad features and general facts, deduced 
by observations even of a rude and imperfect kind, m 
such a form as to require no modification, extension,, 



138 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



or addition when applied in minute detail. In othe 
sciences, when an induction of a moderate extent h 
led us to the knowledge of a law which we conceive t 
be general, the further progress of our inquiries fre 
quently obliges us either to limit its extent or modif; 
its expression. To those who are familiar with th 
history of chemistry, instances of this will present 
themselves at every turn. In physical optics, the gene- 
ral representation of all the series of polarised tints 
and the colours of natural bodies by a certain universal 
scale— the Cartesian law of refraction when applied to 
the extraordinary ray in crystalized media, and even to 
the ordinary, if the reports of some recent experiments 
are to be relied on— together with innumerable other 
laws, simple, natural, and resting on extensive in- 
ductions; have all been either overset, extended, or 
'materially modified by the progress of the science. 

"In physical astronomy, however, when taken in 
that limited acceptation, which restricts it to the ex- 
planation of the planetary motions, our first conclusion 
is our last. The law on which all its phenomena 
^depend, flows naturally and easily from the simplest 
among them, as presented by the rudest observation; 
and, in point of fact, such has really been the order of 
investigation in this science. The rude supposition of 
the uniform revolution of the moon in a circle about the 
earth as a centre, led Xewton at once to the true law 
of gravity, as extending from the earth to its com- 
panion. The uniform circular motions of the planets 
about the sun, in times following the progression 
assigned by observation in Kepler's rule, confirmed 



SIR JOHN HERSCHEL ON GRAVITATION. 



130 



the law, and extended its influence to the boundaries 
of our system. Every tiling more refined than this — 
the elliptic motions of the planets and the satellites — 
their mutual perturbations — the slow changes of their 
orbits and motions, denominated secular variations — 
the deviation of their figures from the spherical form 
— the oscillatory motions of their axes, which produce 
nutation and the precession of the equinoxes — the 
theory of the tides, both of the ocean and the atmo- 
sphere, have all in succession been so many trials for 
life and death in which this law has been, as it were, 
pitted against nature ; trials whose event no human 
foresight could predict, and where it was impossible 
even to conjecture what modifications it might be found 
to need. Even at this moment, if among the innumer- 
able inequalities of the lunar or planetary motions, any 
one, however small, should be discovered decidedly 
not explicable on the hypothesis of a force varying as 
the inverse square of the distance, that hypothesis 
must be modified till it accounts for it." He remarks 
however that " It is hardly necessary to add, that in 
the present state of science this is a case not to be 
contemplated/' But, lest the influence of this great 
law should be gratuitously assumed to extend beyond 
the sphere of actual observation, he further adds 
■"The cautious philosopher however will still regard 
it as worthy inquiry, whether, at enormous distances, 
like those of the fixed stars, or at such comparatively 
microscopic intervals as those we are ordinarily con- 
versant with on the surface of our planet, the rigorous 
law of a force as the inverse square of the distance 



140 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



may not suffer some modification The sub- 
sistence of sidereal clusters, in which the compression 
or crowding of the stars is carried to the extent we- 
have instances of in many parts of the heavens, seems 
hardly compatible with a gravitating force, unopposed 
by some principle of conservation, unless we suppose 
them in a state rapidly verging to a catastrophe. On 
the other hand, with regard to small distances, we have 
no distinct proof, that within a few inches, or even miles, 
from a material point, the law of gravity may not begin 
to deviate appreciably from the Newtonian law." * 

We have made these quotations, from so high an 
authority, in order that the general reader may see 
that the physical laws which science propounds for the 
explanation of phenomena — not excepting even the law 
of gravitation,— are but provisional. So long as ob- 
served phenomena are strictly compatible with the law 
assigned to account for them, that law, be it right or 
wrong, maintains its place in science; but it has no 
claim to any authority beyond the limits of the pheno- 
mena which have been proved to be explicable by it. 
And within, these limits it is of no consequence whether 
the imagined law be really that of nature or not ; but 
every phenomenon, new to observation, puts it to the 
test; places it, as expressed above, on its " trial for 
life or death;" and although an unfavourable verdict 
seals its doom, yet a favourable one merely prolongs> 
its life, till another witness is produced; when it has 
to pass through a similar ordeal. And even when 
phenomenon after phenomenon are all brought under 

: - ; Physical Astronomy ; Ency. Met., p. G47-S. 



CAUSATION. 



LAWS OF PHENOMEN \. 



the dominion of the assigned law, all that we can in 
strictness say is that the appearances arc such as they 
would be if that were a law of nature : thus : in the 
•case of the law of gravitation, we are rigorously justi- 
fied only in saying that all the phenomena of the solar 
system take place as if matter acted upon matter accord- 
ing to the Newtonian law of attraction. And this state- 
ment being true, it is really of no consequence to astro- 
nomical science whether matter does really so act upon 
matter or not. The laws of phenomena, however, apart 
from all consideration of ultimate physical causes, are 
unmistakeably real laws of nature ; and in certain cases 
the very idea of a physical cause (or even of a physical 
effect), is seldom or never entertained. It is a law of 
nature, for instance, that the sun, and every planet of 
the solar system — in so far as the known members 
of it are concerned — rotates on an axis ; they all rotate 
moreover in the same direction, they all revolve round 
the sun in the same direction, and, up to the planet 
Uranus, the distances at which the planets are placed 
from the sun are in accordance with an ascertained 
numerical law. 

There is undeviating law (to the extent, at least, to 
which observation has reached), even in such apparently 
insignificant things as the shell of a snail, and the 
climbing tendril of a common scarlet bean. The spiral 
turns of the shell always proceed in the same uniform 
direction ; and in the spiral course of the bean-stalk, 
up the rod round which it twines, the turns arc always 
as invariably in the same direction as are the turns of 
every cork-screw. A sufficient reason can be assigned 



142 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



for giving the same uniform direction to the spiral 
turns of every cork-screw, but none for the like inva- 
riability of direction in the twining bean-stalks. 

The former class of observed phenomena are not any 
of them traceable to a physical cause ; and although 
there is doubtless some hidden determining cause for 
the latter, yet that cause cannot be one of physical 
necessity, in reference to the final results brought 
about. Of the former phenomena science cannot assign 
any physical cause : — of the latter it cannot discover any 
physical effect* Laplace indeed conjectured a physical 
cause for the rotatory and orbital motions of the planets 
in the same direction, and of the satellites of these also 
in the same direction, on what has been called the 
nebular hypothesis. He imagined that the planets were 
thrown off the rotating sun, then in a molten or nebu- 
lous condition, and that the satellites were in like 
manner thrown off their still molten primaries ; and 
that thus uniformity of direction was the physical con- 
sequence ; but since he propounded this hypothesis, — 
which he did, be it remembered, with all becoming 
hesitation and humility, offering it, to use his own 
words, " with that distrust which everything ought to- 
inspire that is not the result of observation or calcula- 

* The ultimate purpose of the bean-stalk— the hearing of the flower 
and the fruit— would surely he accomplished in whichever direction the 
spirals turned. The determining principle, whatever it be, can there- 
fore he referred only to the arbitrary will of the Creator, and not to any 
physical necessity in regard to the results educed. Whatever it be that 
causes invariability of direction, that invariability is no necessary ante- 
cedent of what follows. 



LAWS OF CAUSATION OXLY HYPOTHETICAL. 



tic " — we say since this hypothesis was proposed, it 
has been found tliat the satellites of Uranus violate its 
conditions : they move in a direction the very opposite 
to that which the hypothesis demands j and this fact 
alone is sufficient to prove that the motions of the other 
component parts of our system arc not such as they 
are of physical necessity. 

The distinction should never be overlooked between 
the Uws which phenomena themselves naturally present 
In our observation, and about which there can be no 
mistake, and the laws of causation which science 
propounds to account for what is thus observed. 
These, unlike the former, arc not necessarily laws of 
nature at all; though, until further discovery in the 
fields of observation and experiment proves their fallacy, 
they may be safely regarded as such. Science cannot 
vouch for the truth of any of its hypotheses of physical 
causation : phenomena that may be satisfactorily 
explicable by referring to such an hypothesis — which 
hypothesis therefore answers all the demands of science 
— may in reality be produced by a cause which is not 
physical at all. And, in fact, even in the so-called 
phy sical causes which science adopts — avc mean of 
course those ultimate physical causes which have no 
physical antecedent — there is always something im- 
material or spiritual implied. The greater part of 
the phenomena of nature are all referred, ultimately, 
to the action of force ; and arc thus brought within 
the dominion of mathematical investigation. But 
what is force in itself ? "How for we may ever be 



144 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



enabled to attain a knowledge of the ultimate and 
inward processes of nature in the production of 
phenomena, we have no means of knowing; but, to 
judge from the degree of obscurity which hangs about 
the only case in which we feel within ourselves a direct 
power to produce any one, there seems no great hope of 
penetrating so far. The case alluded to is the pro- 
duction of motion by the exertion of force. We are 
conscious of a power to move our limbs, and by their 
intervention, other bodies ; and that this effect is the 
result of a certain inexplicable process which we are 
aware of, but can no way describe in words, by which 
we exert force. And even when such exertion produces 
no visible effect (as when we press our two hands vio- 
lently, together so as just to oppose each other's effort) 
we still perceive, by the fatigue and exhaustion, and by 
the impossibility of maintaining the effort long, that 
something is going on within us, of which mind is the 
agent, and the will the determining cause. This im- 
pression we receive of the nature of force, from our 
own effort and our sense of fatigue, is quite different 
from that which we obtain of it from seeing the effect 
of force exerted by others in producing motion. Were 
there no such thing as motion, had we been from 
infancy shut up in a dark dungeon, and every limb 
encrusted with plaster, this internal consciousness 
w^ould give us a complete idea of force ; but when set 
at liberty, habit alone would enable us to recognise its 
exertion by its signal, motion, and that only by finding 
that the same action of mind which in our confined 



HERSCHEL ON PHYSICAL CAUSATION. 1 k5 

state enables us to fatigue and exhaust ourselves by the 
tension of our muscles, puts it in our power, when at 
liberty, to move ourselves and other bodies. But how 
obscure is our knowledge of the process going on 
within us in the exercise of this important privilege, 
in virtue of which alone we act as direct causes, we 
may judge from this, that when we put any limb in 
motion, the seat of the exertion seems to us to be in 
the limb, whereas it is demonstrably no such thing, 
but either in the brain or in the spinal marrow; the 
proof of which is, that if a little fibre, called a 
nerve, which forms a communication between the 
limb and the brain, or spine, be divided in any part 
of its course, however Ave may make the effort, the 
limb will not move. 

"This one instance of the obscurity which hangs 
about the only act of direct causation of which we have 
an immediate consciousness, will suffice to shew how 
little prospect there is that, in our investigation of 
nature, we shall ever be able to arrive at a knowledge 
of ultimate causes, and will teach us to limit our views 
to that of laws, and to the analysis of complex 
phenomena by which they are resolved into simpler 
ones, which, appearing to us incapable of further 
analysis, we must consent to regard as causes. Nor 
let any one complain of this as a limitation of his 
faculties. We have here ample room and verge enough 
for the Ml exercise of all the powers w e possess ; and 
besides, it does so happen, that we arc actually able to 
trace up a very large portion of the phenomena of the 



146 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



universe to this one cause, viz., the exertion of 
mechanical force; indeed, so large a portion, that it 
has been made matter of speculation whether this is 
not the only one that is capable of acting on material 
beings/'*"* 

It thus appears that when we assign an ultimate 
physical cause for any particular group of phenomena, 
we do no more than announce a physical principle or 
agencv from the action of which those phenomena 
would proceed : this active principle therefore is simply 
an expression of the law of the phenomena ; the con- 
ditions implied in it being those to which the phenomena 
are all observed to conform. And such a principle is 
a law of nature only in the sense in which, and to the 
extent in which, it serves to account for natural appear- 
ances. "We can be certain that the cause assigned is 
the true cause only when we are certain that no other 
cause can produce the effects ; that is to say, no other 
cause compatible with what we already know : we are 
certain however that our hypothetical cause expresses 
the real law of the phenomena it suffices to account 
for, inasmuch as it does suffice to account for them. 

* Herschel's Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, pp. 8G-88. 

In addition to the foregoing remarks, vre may observe that even mus- 
cular force is continuously in exercise, within ourselves, quite inde- 
pendent of volition, and unconnected with all effort on our -part : as, for 
instance, the muscular contraction and dilatation of the heart; and the 
corresponding muscular movements in the act of breathing. So also the 
contraction and dilatation of the pupil of the eye; these actions are 
entirely involuntary : the latter are evidently caused by the operation of 
the light itself ; but Jioiv caused vv e cannot tell : the apparently mechani- 
cal force, thus exercised by light, is as marvellous as the mechanism on 
which it acts. 



HYPOTHETICAL CAUSES ALWAYS ADMISSIBLE. 147 

The recent discovery of the planet Neptune— or rather 
the way in which it was discovered, greatly strengthens 
the conviction that the law of gravitation is really that 
of nature in the strictest and most compreliensive sense, 
as regards the system of which this earth forms a part ; 
that the matter of that system is really endowed with 
the property of attraction which the Newtonian Law 
assigns to it. Previously to that discovery, the per- 
turbations of Uranus, when accounted for in conformity 
with this law, as far as they could be accounted for, 
still left residual phenomena unaccounted for. Calcu- 
lation shewed that these also Avould become explicable 
on the hypothesis of the existence of a force of a certain 
amount, external to the orbit of Uranus, and acting 
from an assigned direction at an assigned epoch, and 
in this direction, and at this prescribed time, a new 
planet was actually discovered : from the existence of 
the force the existence of the matter was inferred ; and 
the inference was justified by the actual discovery of 
that matter in the indicated situation. 

But if no such discovery had been made, yet science 
would have accepted the hypothetical cause as a satis- 
factory explanation of the outstanding phenomena ; and 
physical astronomy would ever after have referred those 
phenomena to an invisible planet, without vouching un- 
hesitatingly for its actual existence. It would be re- 
garded as sufficient for the purpose if the hypothetical 
cause really accounted for the appearances. We should 
know that an assignable material mass, revolving in an 
assignable orbit beyond that of Uranus, would be com- 



148 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

petent to produce the observed appearances ; provided 
only that that matter, like all the other matter in our 
system, obeyed the same physical law of force. 

But the force which we thus attribute to the matter 
with which we are surrounded, cannot be conceived to 
be the result of volition, or of exertion, in the matter 
itself. It is doubtless something distinct from, and 
superadded to, those visible and tangible properties 
essential to the existence of matter. Let but these re- 
main, and though gravitation were to be abstracted, 
matter, strictly so called, would still subsist. Gravita- 
tion therefore is not necessary to the existence of 
matter; much less is a certain definite amount of 
this force a necessary accompaniment of a certain de- 
finite quantity of matter. For aught we can tell, 
matter may exist beyond the boundaries of our system 
endued with this power in a far inferior degree, or even 
not endued with it at all. 

What the power itself really is, and how it comes to 
be connected with the matter around us, are questions 
that physical science cannot answer. We observe cer- 
tain effects, the results of some common cause which 
is hidden from our senses ; and all that science can do, 
is to discover some general principle, or law, to which 
those effects may all be referred, as to a real cause ; 
and nothing more can reasonably be demanded of it. 
"The agents employed by nature to act on material 
structures are invisible, and only to be traced by the 
effects they produce. Heat dilates matter with an irre- 
sistible force, but what heat is remains yet a problem. 



WHAT GRAVITY IS NOT KNOWN. i 19 

A current of electricity passing along a wire moves a 
magnetized needle at a distance; but, except from this 
effect, we perceive no difference between the condition 
of the wire when it conveys and when it docs not con- 
vey the stream ; and we apply the terms current, or 
stream, to the electricity, only because in some of its 
relations it reminds us of something we have observed 
in a stream of air or water. In like manner, we see 
that the moon circulates about the earth ; and because 
we believe it to be a solid mass, and have never seen 
one solid substance revolve round another within our 
reach to handle and examine unless retained by a force, 
or united by a tie, we conclude that there is a force, and 
a mode of connection, between the moon and the earth ; 
though what that mode can be we have no conception, 
nor can imagine how such a force can be exerted at a 
distance, and with empty space, or at most an invisible 
fluid, between/' * 

And Newton himself was ever careful to abstain from 
dogmatising respecting this " mode of connection be- 
tween the moon and the earth." At the end of the 
11th section of the Principia he says : — " I employ the 
word attraction here, generally, for any tendency of 
bodies to approach each other ; whether this tendency 
arises from the action of bodies, either mutually seeking 
each other, or acting upon each other by spirits 
emitted, or whether it arises from the action of aether, 
or air, or any medium whatsoever, corporeal or incor- 
poreal, impelling, in any manner amongst themselves, 

* Herscliel's Discourse, p. 103. 



150 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



the bodies swimming in it. In the same general sense 
I take the word impulse ; considering, in this treatise, 
not the kind of forces and physical qualities, but ma- 
thematical quantities and proportions/'' 

And again, in his Opiicks, he says, — " What I call 
attraction may be performed by impulse, or by some 
other means unknown to me. I use that word here to 
signify only in general any force by which bodies tend 
towards one another whatever be the cause/" 

It is thus plain that Newton did not profess to have 
any knowledge of the real source of the force which he 
called attraction or gravitation. He found that a force, 
however generated, acting according to a certain in- 
variable law which he assigned to it, was competent to 
account for what was actually observed ; and this was 
all that science required ; — all that was necessary to 
express the various circumstances, connections, and 
dependencies of the phenomena by "mathematical 
quantities and proportions." 

In like manner, Newton's illustrious successor : — 
ec Is this principle," says Laplace, " a primordial law of 
nature? Or is it a general effect of an unknown 
cause ? Here we are stopped by our ignorance of the 
nature of the intimate properties of matter, and de- 
prived of every hope of answering this question in a 
satisfactory manner."— (System of the World, Book IV. 
chap, xv.) 

If a railway train were observed to be proceeding at 
a uniformly accelerated rate, or indeed at any rate 
admitting of being expressed in algebraic terms, we 



OUlt IGNORANCE OF PHYSICAL CAUSATION. 151 



could calculate its velocity at any instant, and, know tug 
the mass moved, its momentum at any instant, w ithout 
any inquiry as to whether the engine were before or 
behind — whether the train was pulled along or pushed 
along; or, in fact, whether, without any engine at all, 
it moved in virtue of some hidden force the mode of 
action of which Ave were entirely ignorant of. And 
notwithstanding this ignorance, yet, for the purpose of 
embodying the circumstances of the motion in a mathe- 
matical formula, we should be at liberty to regard the 
force as either tractile or propelling, only taking care 
to give it an intensity suited to the observed effects. 
Newton's force of attraction is to be viewed in a similar 
light. 

Enough we think has now been said to enable the 
general reader to perceive what the province of 
physical science really is, and what, in nature, lies 
beyond its reach ; — that its business is — not to penetrate 
the hidden mysteries of physical causation, but to 
investigate the laws of the phenomena caused, though 
we may not know how caused; to discover general 
principles to which, nevertheless, those phenomena 
may be referred, and of which they really are the 
development. Such a general principle or law, if it 
only embrace all the phenomena, does everything that 
science undertakes to accomplish. And if it were even 
revealed to us that all the phenomena, comprehended 
in what is called the physical law of attraction or 
gravitation, are in reality due to the immediate opera- 
tion of Divine agency, still that law would be our suf- 



152 



M0DERX SCEPTICISM. 



flcient guide to tlic prediction of every astronomical 
event that can take place in the solar system ; so long, at 
least, as that agency operated with invariable intensitv; 
and; therefore, the law in question would still be 
retained in science. Seeing then the obscurity in 
which science finds itself involved when attempting to 
go beyond mere phenomena, and to penetrate into the 
secrets of nature's laboratory — passing from the exami- 
nation of what she does to the inquiry as to liow she 
does it, and seeking from observed effects to discover 
the unobserved ultimate causes : — we say, seeing this, 
in reference to the existing material world, is it not 
rash and unphilosophical in the extreme to dogmatise 
on these things in reference to the world that has 
passed away ? What can science possibly know of the 
physical forces in operation in the pre-Adamite earth, 
before the present creation came into being : — what as 
to the intensity of certain of those forces, supposing 
even that they were all precisely similar in character 
and office to those in operation now ? 

And even in the post- Adamite earth, who can say 
what modification particular physical agencies may 
have undergone in consequence of the Fall : — what 
changes were comprehended in the curse pronounced 
upon the earth after that event ? To the earth alone 
that curse exclusively applied; and we may therefore 
conclude that these changes were of a chemical, and 
not of a mechanical nature. We are expressly told 
that new productions (thorns and thistles) made their 
appearance ; and that the old productions were thence- 



FEE-ADAMITE NATURAL AGENCIES UNKNOWN. 



153 



forth to be produced in a different way : not, as before, 
spontaneously, without man's labour and cultivation, 
but that human toil was painfully, and slowly, and 
imperfectly, to replace what had been withdrawn of 
natural stimulating force, in the vegetable world.* 

But a person may say — "I do not believe in this 
story of the Fall, and the consequent deterioration of 
nature's powers." To such a person we have no 
remark to make : he simply announces the state of 
his own mind, his individual feeling in reference to a 
certain thing ; with which state of feeling no one else 
has any direct concern. Such a statement invites no 
controversy, for it offers no challenge. It is a very 
different matter where a person, not content with 
announcing the mere fact of his own individual belief 
or unbelief respecting a proposition, ventures publicly 
to affirm that proposition to be untrue. The truth or 
fallacy of the thing itself may be matter of concern 
with everybody, though what he himself thinks about 
it may interest no other human being ; and it is 
incumbent upon the objector to establish his asser- 

* "Everything* injurious to man in the organic, vegetable, and animal 
creation, is the effect of the curse pronounced upon the earth for Adam's 
sin. however little we may be able to explain the manner in which the 
curse was carried into effect ; since our view of the causal connection 
between sin and evil even in human life is very imperfect; and tho 
connection between spirit and matter in nature generally is altogether 
unknown."— Commentary on the Old Testament. By 0. F. Keil (Clark's 
Theological Library, p. 105.) 

We may notice here that dressing and tilling the garden of Eden must 
have implied agreeable and easy operations ; widely different from those 
laborious ones which became necessary after the Fall; before which 
event man " ate bread.'' indeed; but not "by the sweat of his face." 



15-i 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



tion — to prove liis negative. Tlie reader of the present 
volume will greatly misapprehend its intention, in 
reference to its bearing upon what the Bible reveals, 
if he thinks it aims at anything beyond shewing the 
inconclusiveness of such negative proofs, or rather the 
utter fallacy of what is put forward as such in recent 
publications. In joining issue with the positions 
advanced in these publications, anything more than 
this, on the part of those who undertake to controvert 
them, would be quite gratuitous, and beside the occa- 
sion. To prove affirmatively the veracity of the Bible, 
is a task of a totally different kind : no one would 
think of accomplishing this task by the aid of physical 
science : the veracity follows, of necessity, upon proof 
of the authenticity; and the inquiry into this is an 
Inquiry altogether apart from -physical investigation. 
But the publications referred to put aside all evidence 
of authenticity, treating the Bible as if none existed ; 
and undertake to prove its statements to be untrue by 
an appeal to physical science. What physical science 
has to offer in disproof of the Fall and its alleged 
physical consequences, has been already adduced and 
disposed of. (Page 99.) 

It has been sufficiently seen, from what is stated 
above, that the doctrines of science, as to ultimate 
physical causes, even as respects the existing order of 
nature, are of no authority whatever, other than in the 
sense that they suffice to express the laws of the exist- 
ing phenomena, let these proceed from whatever actual 
causes they may. 



PHYSICAL HYPOTH ES ESi 



155 



But tlicsc hypothetical causes, thus explaining all 
the phenomena of present nature, and satisfying all the 
demands of modern science, may not be applicable, 
even as hypotheses, to the phenomena of a phase of 
nature that has passed away. Such application can he 
made only on the assumption that all terrestrial and 
atmospheric agencies then, were precisely the same 
in character and intensity, as at present ; — an additional 
hypothesis, the truth of which we have no means of 
testing. Natural processes, which are very slow now, 
may have been very rapid then, or the contrary ; and 
agents, in certain of those processes then, may have 
no existence now. Science cannot supply any infor- 
mation in reference to these matters ; and Revelation 
is silent, except, indeed, as to the fact that the duration 
of human life was very different in the primitive ages 
of mankind from what it is at present. We infer 
therefore 

1. That science cannot reach the ultimate physical 
causes of existing natural phenomena. 

2. That science cannot determine whether or not 
these present causes, whatever they be, are the same as 
those which were in operation during the pre- Adamite 
ages, or, if the same in kind, whether or not they have 
been always the same in intensity. 

Nor must it be overlooked that, much as is said 
about the permanence and invariability of the laws of 
nature, there are many of her operations subject to no 
laws that man has yet discovered, or that he is likely 
-ever to discover. Such, for instance, are atmospheric 



156 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



and volcanic phenomena. No one can tell whether it 
will rain or not this day week ; when the next thunder- 
clap will be heard ; or even the point from which the 
wind will blow at a specified hour to-morrow. No one 
can tell when the next eruption of Vesuvius will take 
place^ or the next earthquake in South America. It is 
easy to refer these impressive phenomena to " volcanic 
agency " ; but it would be hard to define, clearly and 
satisfactorily, what that term means ; and harder still 
to assign to the agency, whatever it be, any law of action. 
Not only can we never predict the occurrence till the 
premonitory symptoms actually appear, but even when 
these do appear, we can infer nothing, from past expe- 
rience, as to the intensity of the operating causes, the 
magnitude of the impending catastrophe, or the extent 
of the threatened devastation. 

Speculative geologists, however, in constructing their 
theories, take for granted, as a truth not to be ques- 
tioned, that terrestrial and atmospheric agencies were 
all exactly the same during the pre- Adamite ages as 
now. And yet, notwithstanding this general assump- 
tion, they do not hesitate to replace it by an opposing 
assumption, whenever indications present themselves, 
in the course of their researches, apparently incon- 
sistent with it. Thus : at the remotest period to which 
their speculations reach, the earth was so intensely hot 
as to have become a molten mass : then, after the lapse 
of an enormous period of time, it became as intensely 
cold ; — changing from a state of liquid fusion to a state 
(superficially) of solid ice : then, after the lapse of another 



CERTAIN HYPOTHESES FOUNDED ON FAXCY. 157 



enormous period of time, becoming warm again ; the 
ice disappearing as mysteriously as it came. But if all 
this be admitted, then it must also be admitted that 
nature's agencies must have been very different then 
from what they are now. Yet, for other purposes of 
the geological theories, these agencies are assumed to 
have been precisely the same. 

This tendency to the assumption of arbitrary hypo- 
theses — more especially in the subjects of geology and 
natural history — prevails to a great extent in the pre- 
sent day; and theories having no foundation but in the 
imaginations of those who frame them, have been pro- 
mulgated to account for what the Bible accounts for 
in a very different, and in a far more satisfactory way : 
for these wild and extravagant theories, even if assented 
to, utterly fail in their purpose after all. They have 
been broached, however, by men of confessedly high 
scientific reputation, and thus demand all the more 
attention. But men of science sometimes indulge the 
vagaries of fancy as well as other people ; — first form- 
ing theories in their imagination, and then, availing 
themselves of the acknowledged obscurity in which 
ultimate physical causation is enveloped, set about 
inventing expedients — no matter how romantic — to 
justify these pre-conceived notions: — the very proce- 
dure that genuine science condemns. Its doctrine is 
to observe and collect facts first, and to frame theories 
to account for them afterwards. And it is to be re- 
gretted that books, in many respects valuable, should 



158 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



thus be often made the common depositories of both 
scientific truth and scientific fiction. 

The eminent naturalist, Mr. Charles Darwin, in his 
work On the Origin of Species, has thus mixed fact 
and fancy together : He says, " I cannot doubt that 
the theory of descent with modification embraces all 
the members of the same class. I believe that animals 
have descended from at most four or five progenitors, 
and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy 
would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief 
that all animals and plants have descended from some 
one prototype .... On the principle of natural selec- 
tion with divergence of character, it does not seem 
incredible that, from some low and intermediate form, 
both animals and plants may have been developed; 
and if we admit this, we must admit that all organic 
beings which have ever lived on this earth may have 
descended from some one primordial form. But this 
inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is 
immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is 
different with the members of each great class, as the 
vertebrata, the articulata, etc., for here, as has just 
been remarked, we have in the laws of homology and 
embryology, etc., distinct evidence that all have de- 
scended from a single parent."* 

The author's meaning, in reference to progressive 
development of structures and natural selection, may, 
■perhaps, be gathered from the following passage : — 

* The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, pp. 518, 519. 



DARWIN OX (C NATURAL SELECTION." 159 

"Organs now of trifling importance have probably 
in some cases been of high importance to an early pro- 
genitor; and after having been slowly perfected at a 
former period, have been transmitted in nearly the 
same state, although now become of very slight use ; 
any actually injurious deviations in their structure will 
always have been checked bv natural selection. Seei - 1 e 
how important an organ of locomotion the tail is in 
most aquatic animals, its general presence and use for 
many purposes in so many land animals, which, in 
their lungs, or modified swim-bladders, betray their 
aquatic origin, may perhaps be thus accounted for. A 
well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic- 
animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for 
all sorts of purposes, as a fly-flapper, an organ of pre- 
hension, or as an aid in turning, as with the dog, though 
the aid must be slight, for the hare, with hardly any 
tail, can double quickly enough."* This, though some- 
what fanciful, we think is certainly an ingenious " work- 
ing in" of old material. We shall make one extract 
more from Mr. Darwin's extraordinary book, in order 
that the reader may see to what lengths an unbridled 
imagination may carry even a man of science. The 
author thus traces the successive stages of development, 
under the constant supervision of what he calls natural 
selection, which are to be passed through, before an 
organ of vision — the eye — can grow into what it is : — 

u It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye 
to a telescope. We know that this instrument has 
* The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, p. 213. 



160 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the 
highest human intellects ; and we naturally infer that 
the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous 
process. But may not this inference be presump- 
tuous ? Have we any right to assume that the Creator 
works by intellectual powers like those of man? If 
we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we 
ought in imagination to take a thick layer of trans- 
parent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a 
nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose 
every part of this layer to be continually changing 
slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of differ- 
ent densities and thicknesses, placed at different dis- 
tances from each other, and with the surfaces of each 
layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must 
suppose that there is a power (natural selection) always 
intently watching each slight accidental alteration in 
the transparent layers, and carefully selecting each 
alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in 
any way, or in any degree, tend to produce a distincter 
image. We must suppose each new state of the in- 
strument to be multiplied by the million, and each to 
be preserved till a better be produced, and then the 
old ones to be destroyed. In living bodies, variation 
will cause the slightest alterations, generation will 
multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection 
will pick out, with unerring skill, each improvement. 
Let this process go on millions of years ; and during 
each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; 
and may we not believe that a living optical instrument 



FORMATION OF THE EYE BY NATURAL SELECTION. 161 

might thus be formed as superior to one of -lass as 
the works of the Creator are to those of man " ? * 

While transcribing the above singular passage we 
have been forcibly reminded of Kepler's fortuitous 
salad. The story goes (it is related in Mr. Drink- 
water Beth-one's Life of Kepler) that the astronomer 
having delayed coming down to his supper, his wife, 
who was somewhat of a shrew, took him to task for 
keeping her waiting. He excused himself by telling 
her he had got so absorbed in thinking of the theory 
of " the fortuitous concourse of atoms/' that he had 
forgotten the salad she had prepared. Katherine natu- 
rally asked for an explanation of this odd theory. 
He replied : — " Suppose that from all eternity there had 
been flying about atoms of vinegar, and atoms of oil, 
and atoms of lettuce, you perceive that, in time, 
we might have a salad." " Aye aye," said his wife \ 
" all that might be : — but you wouldn't get one so nicely 
dressed as this is"! So in reference to the fortuitous 
eye, formed as above supposed ; we think it would have 
been a far inferior eye to that which Mr. Darwin em- 
ployed in penning the foregoing scheme. Yet such are 
the speculations "which," Professor Powell affirms, 
" must soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion 
in favour' of the grand principle of the self-evolving 
powers of nature " ! f 

The writings of Bishop Colenso abound in assertions 
to the effect that modern science is opposed to the 
statements of the Bible ; but he has never in a single 
* Darwin, p. 203. f Essays and Rev tars. p. 100. 

M 



16.2 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



instance attempted to prove such to be the case. He 
takes a declaration of Scripture and compares it with 
some mere speculation, like that above, in reference to 
matters, beyond the reach of human observation, of 
which, if man is to know for certainty anything at all, 
his knowledge must come to him, not by science, but 
by Revelation; and instead of shewing that the Bible 
is opposed to modern science, he merely proves that 
modern speculations are opposed to the Bible. In the 
extract given above, the author of the elaborate eye- 
making process, there described, says " that a living 
optical instrument might thus be formed as superior 
to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to 
those of man/' But if " He who made the eye/' had 
really matured its construction in this complicated, 
wearisome, and tentative manner, the appellation of 
" the Creator " could not be justly applied to him. 
Indeed there is so much haziness about this visionary 
scheme that the reader cannot recognize anything 
approaching to a creative power at all. What the 
author calls " natural selection 33 is regarded through- 
out his book as some discriminating agency in nature ; 
so that when he requires us to " suppose that there is 
a power (natural selection) always intently watching 
each slight accidental alteration" &c. in the rudi- 
ments of an eye yet unformed, he requires us to sup- 
pose that a perfectly formed eye was superintending 
the formation of the first eye ! We cannot help 
thinking that the mixing up of such fanciful specu- 
lations as this about the origin of the eye, with the 



MAX ONLY A DEVELOPED PISH. 1(53 

well-established results of observation and philoso- 
phical research, is likely to bring— not the Bible, but 
science itself into contempt; at least among those who 
cannot discriminate between the wheat and the tares, 
thus sown together in the same field; and who do not 
know that "to ascend to the origin f tilings, and 
speculate on the creation, is not the business of the 
natural philosopher."* 

Moreover: the theory of "Natural Selection - con- 
veys no conception of an intelligible process. Selec- 
tion of any kind must necessarily have reference to a 
desired purpose— there must be a contemplated end— 
a foreseen ulterior result : — Desigx. By believing in 
the actual existence of so occult a transforming prin- 
ciple, we may believe that, in course of time, men may 
literally " gather grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles 
for why should not the thorn, by development, become 
a vine, and the thistle a fig-tree, as well as a fish, by 
development, (as is actually asserted) become a man?f 

Of a like character to the above are some of the 
recent theories of perverted science about the origin 

* Herschel's Discourse, p. 38. 

t " The eterncal order of one simple system, in which the same beings, 
slightly changed, existed, and in which water is the destroying and fire 
the renovating principle, though supported by so much talent, fact, and 
experiment, has disappeared, for the sound geologist, with the more 
visionary ideas of the earth's being originally a portion of the sun ; and 
of organised germs passing, in the immensity of time, through the dif- 
ferent stages of improvement, rising from fishes, through me~rmaids~ 
•quadrupeds, and apes; and, at last, to perfect man!" Six Discourses 
delivered before the Royal Society. By Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. 1827, 
p. 52. 1 



164 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



and antiquity of the human race. Professor Huxley, 
in his work on Man's Place in Nature, conceives the 
notion that man is a lineal descendant of the ape, and, 
from certain structural analogies, infers that the human 
being is only the chimpanzee, or gorilla, in an ad- 
vanced stage of development : — " Brought face to face 
with these blurred copies of himself, the least thought- 
ful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due perhaps, 
not so much to disgust at the aspect of what looks like 
an insulting caricature, as to the awakening of a sud- 
den and profound mistrust of time-honored theories 
and strongly-rooted prejudices regarding his own posi- 
tion in nature, and his relations to the under-world of 
life ; while that which remains a dim suspicion for the 
unthinking, becomes a vast argument, fraught with the 
deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with 
the recent progress of the anatomical and physiological 
sciences." 

"Without question, the mode of origin, and the 
early stages of development of man are identical with 
those of the animals immediately below him in the 
scale : — without doubt, in these respects, he is far 
nearer the apes, than the apes are to the dog." 

" Be the differences between the hand and foot of 
man and the gorilla what they may — the differences 
between those of the gorilla, and those of the lower 
apes are much greater." The author urges us, how- 
ever, to remember — " that there is no existing link 
between man and the gorilla 33 ; but at the same time 
not to forget " that there is a no less sharp line of de- 



THE APE THE PROGENITOR OF .MAX. ] (J5 

marcation, a no less complete absence of transitional 
form between the gorilla and trie orang and the gibbon. 
« .. . • The structural differences between man and 
man-like apes certainly justify our regarding him as 
constituting a family apart from them, though inas- 
much as he differs less from them than they do from 
other families of the same order, there can be no justi- 
fication for placing him in a distinct order." 

" The most superficial study would at once convince 
us that, among the orders of placental mammals, 
.neither the whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the 
sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, 
and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the 
insectivorous moles and hedgehogs and bats, could 
claim our Homo as one of themselves. There would 
remain then but one order for comparison, that of 
apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the 
question for discussion would narrow itself to this — Is 
man so different from any of these apes that he must 
form an order by himself ? Or does he differ less from 
them, than they differ from one another, and hence 
must take his place in the same order with them?" 
"Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, 
men differ more widely from one another than they do 
from the apes." 

No creature, however, with the external form of 
man, that is, an erect biped with a smooth skin, has 
ever been discovered without the ability to kindle a 
fire : and no creature with a hairy hide has ever been 
found possessing that ability. In fact the smooth skin 



166 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



alone will ever distinguish, externally the man from 
the brute, however little they may differ in ana- 
tomical structure. 

The brutes which Professor Huxley regards as the 
progenitors of nian, are thus characterized by an old 
writer (Purchas), whom the Professor quotes : — " They 
cannot speake, aud have no understanding more than a 
beast. The people of the countries when they travaile 
in the woods, make fires where they sleep at night ; 
and in the morning when they are gone,, the pongoes 
[gorillas, or chimpanzees] will come and sit about the 
fire till it goeth out ; for thev have no understanding 
to lay wood together." And; quoting from Mr. Ford's 
Paper on the Gorilla, in the Philadelphia Academy of 
Sciences, 185.2, " He is said to seize a musket, and 
instantly crush the barrel between his teeth. . . 
This animal's savage nature is very well shewn by the 
implacable desperation of a young one that was brought 
here. It was taken very young, and kept four months, 
and many means were used to tame it ; but it was in- 
corrigible, so that it bit me an horn- before it died/' 
Is there any approach to humanity in such a brute as 
this? 

" It is very long/' says Professor Huxley, " before 
the body of the young human being can be readilv dis- 
criminated from that of the young puppy. . . But, 
exactly in those respects in which the developing man 
differs from the dog, he resembles the ape. So that 
it is only quite in the later stages of development 
that the young human being presents marked differ- 



DISCONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT IMPOSSIBLE. 167 



ences from the young ape, while the latter departs as 
much from the dog in its development as the in an 
does. Startling as the last assertion may appear to 
he, it is demonstrably true, and it alone appears to me 
sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity 
of man with the rest of the animal world, and more 
particularly and closely with apes."* 

From the foregoing extracts the reader may get an 
idea of the kind of researches by which the Develop- 
ment Theory is supported, and the conclusion reached 
that, by natural development, the lowest grade of apes 
have ascended through the degrees of Gibbon, Orang, 
Chimpanzee, and Gorilla, up to Man. Now develop- 
ment implies continuity : but in Professor Huxley's 
book we are presented only with insulated facts, which 
plainly declare nothing but discontinuity. No one link 
is united to that which succeeds it : the links are 
all independent, and widely separated. The author ac- 
knowledges (see p. 164 above) that nothing exists to till 
up even one of the intervals. Surely where continuity 
ends, development ends. As we are told that there is 
nothing to connect the gibbon with the orang, the 
orang with the chimpanzee, the chimpanzee with the 
gorilla, nor the gorilla with man, on what grounds 
can we conclude that these are but so many separate 
terms of a continuous series? If such they really be, 
account for the separating gaps : shew us at least some 
indisputable vestiges of the wanting links, if not 
among the living, among the dead. Gorillas could not 
* Professor Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, pp. 52-104. 



1GS 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



have destroyed their offspring, or the chain of sequences 
would have ended with the gorilla: he would have been 
the last link. Nor could early man, we may presume 
have devoured his immediate parents : but thev are 
gone — where are they — where the evidence that these, 
our brute ancestors, had any but a purely visionary 
existence in the imagination -of theorising zoologists ? 

We contend that there ought to be living evidence of 
these intermediate races : it is incredible that the 
superior beings should perish, and yet the inferior, 

from which they have proceeded, continue to exist : 

that creatures more advanced in the scale of nature, 
having attained to their superior elevation by the slow 
process of continuous development, should then have 
disappeared; while then remote, and less perfect, 
ancestors remained, and continued to propagate the 
more debased forms. 

The author himself acknowledges " that there is no 
existing link between man and the gorilla/' and " a no 
less absence of transitional form between the gorilla 
and the orang and the gibbon" ■ which is an admission 
that there are no grounds, in nature, for the develop- 
ment theory. To suppose that man has proceeded from 
the ape, per saltum, would be a still greater- absurdity : 
in this way, there coidd have been no proceeding — no 
intelligible connection— at all : each must have been a 
distinct creation. And to suppose that the gaps of 
separation were ever actually filled up by intermediate 
creatures, all of which have perished and disappeared, 
is to suppose what is felt to be repugnant to nature 



DEVELOPMENT NEGATIVED BY PACTS. 



10 ( J 



and to reason. As stated above, we cannot believe 
that the advanced types of man-like creatures decayed 
and wholly ceased to exist, while their degraded pro- 
genitors continued to live on and nourish. This would 
be not following the order of nature, but reversing it. 
Speaking for himself, the present writer, after a careful 
perusal of Professor Huxley's book, can truly say that — 
if there were no Bible in existence, and no light from 
any quarter thrown upon the early history of the human 
family, save what that book affords, the irresistible con- 
clusion he would be compelled to come to would be 
that — from whatever primitive stock man may have 
descended, or in what way soever he may have made 
his first appearance on the earth, he cannot possibly 
have descended from an ape : that whatever may be 
the true theory of his derivation, the development 
theory, as unfolded in this volume, is altogether un- 
tenable and inadmissible. In short his conclusion 
from Prof. Huxley's recorded facts — all of which he 
receives — are diametrically opposite to those of the 
author himself : for he infers from these facts, not 
merely that the development theory is not established, 
but, on the contrary, that it is wholly negatived and 
destroyed. And his principal ground for this conclu- 
sion he has briefly stated above : — He cannot but think 
that, except among a very limited class of speculative 
philosophers, people will be slow to conclude that if 
there had existed no apes there would have existed no 
men; that, in fact, they will feel less hesitation in 
believing even that "The Lord God formed man of 



170 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life. And man became a living soul." 
Even if the anatomical structure of man bore a closer 
resemblance to that of the ape than it actually does, 
still the mere outer coverings of the two would we 
think preclude the idea of the intimate relationship 
contended for : the hairy hide of the one, and the 
delicate smooth skin of the other, Tronic! alone imply 
the distinct origin of each. Besides ; the bony carcase 
— the least important part, is altogether inadequate to 
convey a correct idea of Man : We behold in this onlv 
what death has left ; and the contemplation can furnish 
no clue to what it has taken away : — how little or how 
much. 

But even from the exclusive study of the skeleton. 
Professor Owen, one of the greatest of living compara- 
tive anatomists, comes to conclusions directly opposed 
to those of Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley. He 
says — 

No known cause of change productive of the vari- 
ties of mammalian species could operate in altering the 
size, the shape, or the connections of the premaxillary 
bones which so remarkably distinguish the troglodytes 
gorilla, not from man only, but from all other 
anthropoid ap e s . " 

" The unity of the human species is demonstrated by 
the constancy of those osteological and dental characters 
to which the attention is more particularly directed in 
the investigation of the corresponding characters of the 
higher quadrumana. Man is the sole species of his 



man's tendency to moral degradation. J 71 



genus,, the sole representative of his order and sub- 
class. Thus, I trust, has been furnished the confuta- 
tion of the notion of a transformation of the ape into 
man."* Another eminent naturalist remarks : — 

"Whatever may be said about the possibility of such 
Simian development, the possible human deterioration 
is an inevitable attribute of the rational, moral, free- 
agent, man; capable of the noblest aspirations, and of 
wondrous intellectual development, but also with a 
capacity for moral degradation such as belongs to him 
alone of all created beings. The one characteristic 
as well as the other, separates man by an impassible 
barrier from all those other living creatures that might 
appear in some respects gifted with endowments akin 
to his own/'t 

We would express the fact here stated in even a 
stronger form : not only is there in man " a capacity 
for moral degradation ; 33 but, without the restraints of 
civilisation, and the still higher restraints of Revelation, 
there is in man a tendency to moral degradation. In 
the earlier ages, an occasional band of fugitive slaves, 
or of escaped criminals, furnished by external aid with 
provisions and a boat, shaping their course they knew 
not whither and cared not whither, and driven across 
the ocean by tempestuous winds, may have isolated 
themselves in various wild and distant places ; and, 
freed from all the restraints just mentioned, each 
successive generation would sink lower and lower in 

* O^-en : Chisxijicofioii of Mammals, Appendix B. 
f Wilson's Pre-historfc Man, p. 182. 



172 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

the moral and intellectual scale ; and such degraded 
specimens of humanity as those which the Bosjesmans, 
the Andaman Islanders, and the Australian Savages, 
present, might well be the ultimate result.* 

On the other hand, voyagers of a different stamp 
may have been carried, perforce, to the shores of 
America long ages before the Spaniards landed on that 
continent. As Washington Irving suggests <c A 
wandering bark may occasionally have lost sight of the 
land-marks of the old continents, and been driven by 
tempests across the wilderness of waters long before 
the invention of the compass ; but never returned to 
reveal the secrets of the ocean.^f Captain Bligh and 
his unfortunate companions were sent adrift, with 
scarcely any supply of provisions, by the mutineers of 
the ship " Bounty/'' and performed the perilous voyage 
of upwards of three thousand miles in an open boat. 
It is perfectly credible therefore that a ship, or even a 
common boat, with a few civilised persons of both sexes 
on board, may have been compulsorily carried from the 

* " The native Australian, and the Andaman Islander, may be taken 
as fairly representing the lowest state of human society of which we have 
any certain knowledge. These savages have articulate language ; they 
know the use of fire ; they have tools, though but simple and clumsy 
ones. . . There is no authentic account of any people having been 
discovered who didnot possess language, tools, and fire." (From a paper, 
in the first number of the Anthropological Review, p. 21, by Mr. E. 
Burnet Tylor.) 

t Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Book I. ; ' In one of the 
houses at Guadaloupe, the Spaniards were surprised to find a pan or 
other utensil of iron. . . . Certain it is, that no native iron was 
over found among the people of these islands. In another house was the 
stern-post of a vessel." Book VI., chap. ii. 



DISTRIBUTION OE THE III . MAX RACE. 



shores of the old world to those of the new, many 
centuries before Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, 
and that to some such tempest-tossed wanderers and 
their descendants, the ancient cities of Mexico, 
Yucatan, and Peru, may have owed their existence. 
Moreover, the appearance and disappearance of islands 
are no uncommon phenomena now. "Who can tell 
what island stepping-stones there may have been, in 
remote times, even to America and Australia ? 

Mr. Darwin supports his theory of ape-development 
by referring to the natural history of the pigeon, which 
he says has advanced by continuous gradation from 
the common rock-pigeon, up to the carrier and 
tumbler. Professor Wilson however draws a different, 
and we think a far more reasonable conclusion from 
this fact : — namely, that as all the numerous varieties 
of the pigeon are traceable to one primitive pigeon- 
stock, so all the varieties of man, arc, at least, as likely 
to have proceeded from one primitive human-stock. 

It is well known that the physical effects of habitat 
are very remarkable on all animals ; not only changing 
their external colour, but even modifying their actual 
structure. "The tuskless, bristleless, domesticated 
pigs, which the French and Spaniards introduced into 
the Falkland Islands about the beginning of last cen- 
tury, have now become a wild fierce race, with great 
tusks and stiff bristles, some of the old boars of which 
would do honour even to Erymanthus. The rabbits, 
too, have so much changed, not in mere external 
covering only, but in conformation of head and jaw, 



17 1< 



MODEHX SCEPTICISM. 



that Cuvier himself, ignorant of the fact of their origin, 
regarded the skull of one which was sent him as a dis- 
tinct species." " Bearing in mind the wonder- 
ful effects which habitat is capable of producing on 
other animals, we incline to the convertibility of races, 
and believe that, in lapse of ages, either would assume 
the characteristics of the other. How long it would 
require to stamp a European race with the thorough 
characteristics of the negro, or vice versa, we do not 
know; no proper trial has ever been made ; and though 
the experience of several centuries lies before them, 
ethnologists seem rather to indulge in their own hypo- 
theses, than begin to collect data from actual exist- 
ences The United States, peopled by English, 

Scotch, Irish, French, and Germans, have in the space 
of a couple of centimes produced a style of figure and 
physiognomy different from any of the originals — 
a style so peculiar, that we know of no European 
traveller who has failed to remark it." * 

We have seen from the foregoing extracts and re- 
marks, that conclusions of the most important charac- 
ter have been deduced from data purely arbitrary, and 
of which observation gives no account. Such con- 
clusions can have not the slightest scientific value; 
since observation alone can supply materials for the 
construction of the sound and admissible theories of 

* From an interesting pa per on the « Effects of Habitat on Animals," 
m Chambers Journal (Jxme 27, 1816): chiefly compiled from there- 
searches of Mr. Darwin, and M. Glover of Breslau. 



PHENOMENA THAT FLUCTUATE WITH TIME. 1 7 ~) 

physical science. A theory may indeed be imagined 
anterior to the discovery of the phenomena actually 
implied in it ; but as long as observation fails to detect 
these phenomena, so long does that theory remain 
merely an unverified speculation ; and, — call it what v, e 
may, it is certainly not science. And conclusions, 
really based upon observation, are equally inadmissible, 
whenever they comprehend remote periods of time, 
either past or future, if the phenomena observed now, 
being of an unsteady or fluctuating character, may 
become so modified by lapse of time, as to be different, 
at present, from what they were or will be. 

Let us imagine that the exact likeness of one of the 
antediluvian patriarchs, in his declining years, could 
be inspected now r ; and that we were quite ignorant of 
the original : the conclusion, as to his age at the time, 
would unquestionably be that he could not have been 
more than 80 or 90 years old ; whereas he may have 
been 800 or 900. Or imagine the same antediluvian 
to be resuscitated, and to appear amongst us : he would 
naturally conclude, upon seeing a person in the de- 
crepitude of old age, that he had lived 8 or 9 centuries. 
These speculators — the modern and the ancient — would 
each determine agreeably to all the accumulated expe- 
rience of his own period ; — and each would be wrong. 

As illustrations of this inadmissible latitude of con- 
clusion, we shall quote a passage or two from Sir 
Charles LyelFs recent work On the Antiquity of Man. 

In alluding to the present progressive elevation 
above the sea of certain marine strata that once marked 



176 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



the level of the sea-coast, and which are now found, in 
Norway, at the height of 600 feet and upwards, Sir C. 
Lyell observes: — "The upward movement now in 
progress, in parts of Norway and Sweden, extends 
throughout an area of 1,000 miles north and south, and 
for an unknown distance east and west, the amount of 
elevation always increasing as we proceed towards the 
North Cape, where it is said to equal five feet in a 
centurv. If we could assume that there had been an 
average rise of two and a half feet in each 100 years 
for the last 50 centuries, this would give an elevation 
of 125 feet in that period. In other words, it would 
fellow that the shores, and a considerable area of the 
former bed of the North Sea had been uplifted verti- 
cally to that amount, and converted into land in the 
course of the last 5,000 years. A mean rate of con- 
tinuous vertical elevation of two and a half feet in 
a century would, I conceive, be a high average, yet 
even if this be assumed, it would require 24,000 years 
for parts of the sea-coast of Norway, where the post- 
tertiary marine strata occur, to attain the height of 
600 feet."* 

We would here ask : Does this uplifting force, what- 
ever it be, increase in intensity with the increase of 
load to be uplifted ? If not, the rate of elevation must 
rapidly diminish, as the elevation itself increases. The 
force that could lift to the height of 50 feet in one 
century, might be inadequate to raise the mass an 
additional five feet in the next ; inasmuch as, together 

* Lyell : On the Antiquity of Man, p. 58. 



ALLEGED SLOW FORMATION OF DELTAS. 1 7~ 

with this five feet, the 50 feet, already out of water, 
must be uplifted with it. At the commencement of 
the uplifting, the expansive forec driving the mass up- 
wards, must have acted with its maximum energy : it 
must have gradually diminished in the very act of 
expansion; while the load to be lifted, rising out of 
the water more and more, must have as gradually in- 
creased. How then can any average rate of ascent be 
inferred from observations as to recent vertical pro- 
gress? Similar reasoning is employed to determine 
the time that must have been requisite for the accu- 
mulation of the sedimentary deposits which form the 
deltas of large rivers : thus, with respect to the delta 
of the Mississippi, it is remarked : — 

" Although we cannot estimate correctly how many 
years it may have required for the river to bring down 
from the upper country so large a quantity of earthy 
matter — the data for such a computation being as yet 
incomplete — we may still approximate to a minimum 
of the time which such an operation must have taken, 
by ascertaining experimentally the annual discharge 
of water by the Mississippi, and the mean annual 
amount of solid matter contained in its waters. The 
lowest estimate of the time required would lead us to 
assign a high antiquity, amounting to many tens of 
thousands of years (probably more than 100,000) to 
the existing delta. 33 

But this reasoning assumes that the earthy matter 
carried down from the upper country, and depositing 
itself, year after year, throughout the earliest ages, 

N 



178 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



from tlic very commencement of the delta-formation,, 
was renewed as rapidly as it was carried away ; other- 
wise, by whatever quantity the supply had at any time 
been diminished, by so much less would be the future 
yield. To give any value to the foregoing deductions, 
from experimental examinations noiv, of " the mean 
annual amount of solid matter contained in its waters/' ' 
the supplies of this solid matter must be proved to 
have remained undiminished by the consumption de- 
manded and afforded. But can it be really supposed 
even (proof is, of course out of the question), that as 
much silt is carried down the river now, when there 
is little to be carried, as in the beginning, when there 
was much to be carried : — that the loose matter, abun- 
dant at first, and readily yielding to the abrasion of 
the stream, and the denuding effects of weather, is 
somehow or other — like the widow's cruse of oil — con- 
tinually renewed, offering itself spontaneously for the 
purpose of building up the delta, at the fixed average 
rate of so much a year; as if the construction was 
carried on by contract ? It is plain that the more of 
this loose matter which was borne away in the earlier 
periods, the less must be left to be borne away during 
the later periods ; and nothing can be fairly inferred,, 
from the present supply, in favour of the great anti- 
quity of the delta, whatever may be fairly inferred 
against that antiquity. Even admitting that all the 
denuding causes operated with no more intensity 
thousands of years ago than they do at present, yet 
rocks, that those causes have laid bare now, were then 



ALLEGED ANTIQUITY OF THE NIAGARA. 179 

covered with the loose matter subsequently, and by 
degrees carried away. 

Similar considerations apply to the present observed 
slow recession of the falls of the Niagara. It is in- 
ferred, from this slow retreat, that 35,000 years must 
have elapsed since these falls were at a certain place, 
lower down the river, where indications appear of their 
having once been. But the rushing stream, having 
greedily fed, as it were, upon the original ample 
supply, is necessarily now upon short allowance, from 
the diminution of the stock ; whereas the present 
rate of consumption is assumed in the calculation, 
by which the above-named number of years is reached, 
to have been the average rate during the whole 
period ! 

It is stated, on the authority of Count de la Marmora, 
that at Cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient 
bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living- 
species, and numerous fragments of antique potterv, 
has been elevated about 300 feet above the present 
level of the Mediterranean ; on which Sir C. Lycll 
remarks : — " If we assume the average rate of upheaval 
to have been, as before hinted (p. 58), 2h feet in a 
century, 300 feet would give an antiquity of 12,000 
years to the Cagliari pottery, even if we simply confine 
our estimate to the upheaval above the sea-level, with- 
out allowing for the original depth of water in which 
the mollusca lived. Even then, our calculation would 
merely embrace the period during which the upward 
movement was going on ; and we can form at present 



180 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



no conjecture as to the probable era of its commence- 
ment or termination. - "* 

We can account for such calculations as these, and 
the purely hypothetical data on which, they are founded, 
only form a desire to reach high numbers. What 
ground is even alleged for assuming 2h feet, rather 
than any other number of feet, more or less ? The 
uprising seems now to hare ceased : but it is reason- 
able to suppose that the motion gradually slackened, 
more and more, till it thus wholly subsided. There 
was a time, therefore, when the average rate of move- 
ment upwards must have diminished to 1 foot in a 
century, then to half a foot ; and so on, till all move- 
ment had ceased : so if the calculation had been made 
ages ago, instead of now, the 12,000 years would 
have expanded to 30,000, 60,000, or even to an infinite 
number of years : in fact, upon the above principles, 
this ought to be the inference now, if the rise at pre- 
sent is imperceptible. 

" The submergence of Wales to the extent of 1,^00 
feet, as proved by glacial shells, would recprirc 56,000 
years, at the rate of 2\ feet per century ; but taking 
Professor Ramsay^s estimate of 800 feet more, that 
elevation being required for the deposition of some of 
the stratified drift, we must demand an additional 
period of 32,000 years, amounting in all to 88,000; and 
the same time would be required for the re-elevation of 
the tract to its present height. But if the land rose in 
the second continental period no more than 600 feet 

* Lyell : On the Antiquity of Man, p. 178. 



LYELl/s INADMISSIBLE CONCLUSIONS. 181 

above the present level, as in the mass p, 27\), this 600 
feet would liavc taken 26,000 years for its completion/' 
. . . . Tlic author adds, however : " I am aware that it 
may be objected that the average rate here proposed is a 
purely arbitrary and conjectural one because, at the 
North Cape, it is supposed that there lias beeu a rise 
of about six feet in a century, and at Spitzbergen, 
according to Mr. Lamont, a still faster upheaval during 
the last 400 years. But granting that in these excep- 
tional cases (none of them as yet well established) the 
rising or sinking has, for a time, been accelerated, I 
do not believe the average rate of motion to exceed that 
above proposed."* 

No doubt the author has full right to believe or not 
believe whatever he chooses; but as no reasons arc 
assigned to justify even his own conclusion, all being 
" purely arbitrary and conjectural," that conclusion can 
have no weight with those who, the more ready they 
are to yield implicit obedience to the teachings of 
science, are the less inclined to acknowledge the autho- 
rity of mere opinion. 

"We shall now c^ivc an extract from the writings of .Mr. 
Gosse, a philosophical naturalist of very different views: 

cc Certain investigations made in the alluvial deposit 
of the Nile are considered to prove that man has been 
living in a state of comparative civilisation in the Nile 
Valley for the last 13,500 years. But that conclusion 
absolutely rests on the supposition that the rate of 
increase formed by the annual deposit of the Nile-mud 

* Lyell ; On the Antiquity of Man, \\ 23 G. 



182 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



has been always exactly the same as now, — a supposi- 
tion, not only without the least shadow of proof, but 
also directly contrary to the highest probability, nay, 
certainty, in the estimation of those who believe in the 
Noachian deluge. For surely the drainage of the 
entire plain of North Africa after that inundation, 
must have produced an alluvium of vast thickness in a 
very brief time ; while beneath that deposit the works 
of the antediluvian world might well be buried. Yet 
the possibility of there ever having been any greater 
rate of deposit than within the last 3,000 years, the 
recorder of those investigations, in his unseemly haste 
to prove the Bible false, strangely leaves wholly out of 
his consideration."* Speaking of extinct species, the 
same author remarks : — " These forms, many of them 
so huge and uncouth, are well known as having 
tenanted various regions of the earth during what is 
known as the Tertiary Era, in its later periods. They 
certainly do not exist in those regions now. "When did 
their life — their species life — terminate ? I have been 
assuming that they were upon earth as living sentient 
beings, in the earliest ages of what we call the historic 
period — that is, according to the chronology of the 
Word of God, which must be true, within the last 6,000 

* The fact here noticed, of the rapid formation of deltas after the De- 
luge, remains the same, whether the region of these deltas be regarded 
as old land once inundated, or new land once at the bottom of the sea. 
Sir C. Lyell, in a former work, says " Xo combination of causes has yet 
been conceived so capable of producing extensive and gradual denuda- 
tion as the action of the waves and currents of the ocean upon land slowly 
rising out of the deep."— Elements of Geology, vol. I. p. 191. 



EVIDENCE FROM FLINT IMPLEMENTS. 



183 



years. This assumption is so heterodox that, unsup- 
ported by evidence, it would be generally rejected : let 
us inquire what evidence there is that man was an 
inhabitant of the globe contemporaneously with these 
huge giants of the bestial creation. The author then 
discusses the proof at length, and proceeds : — " I cannot 
help thinking that both the rhinoceros and this elephant 
[the elephant of which the skeleton is now in the 
museum of Petersburg] roamed over the plains of 
Siberia, not only since the creation of man, but even 
since the Deluge. . . . What supposition so natural as 
that, perhaps in a blinding snow-storm they slipped 
into a crevice in the ice-cliff, were snowed up, and 
thus preserved by the antiseptic power of frost to this 
age V 3 

Concerning the flint-implements discovered at Mcn- 
checourt, near Abbeville, and which arc adduced as 
evidence of the high anticpiity of man, the eminent 
geologist Mr. Prestwich, in a paper read before the 
Royal Society in 1859, and quoted by Mr. Gosse, says 
that " He docs not consider that the facts of necessity 
carry man back in past time more than they bring for- 
ward the great extinct mammals towards our own 
time, the evidence having reference only to relative, 
and not to absolute time. In fact, from the evidence 
here exhibited, and from all that he knows regarding 
the drift-phenomena generally, the author sees no 
reason against the conclusion that this period of man 
and the extinct mammals — supposing their contem- 
poraneity to be proved — was brought to a sudden end 



184 



MODEKX SCEPTICISM. 



by a temporary inundation of the land ; on the con- 
trary lie sees much to support sucli a view on purely 
geological considerations.^^ 

But admitting the high antiquity of the bones, ana- 
logous to those of the human being, and of the carved 
implements, very recently discovered in the depart- 
ment of Tarn et Garonne, and which, through the 
exertions of Professor Owen, have been secured for 
the British Museum, all that can be fairly inferred 
from the discovery is — that creatures externally man- 
like, and endowed with intelligence superior to that of 
the lower animals now living, were in existence ages 
before the creation of Adam. As already observed 
(p. 170), from what death has left behind, we can infer 
nothing as to what it has taken away over and above 
the mere animal life. An erect creature, like man, 
furnished too with similar bodily organs, let him have 
been placed on the earth whenever he may, must have 
been endowed with a measure of intelligence sufficient 
to enable him to sustain the life that had been bestowed. 
He could not have coped with, and captured, wild and 
swift-running quadrupeds, nor birds, nor fishes, with- 
out artificial weapons ; and Avhere there were hands, 
handicraft, to at least this extent, must have resulted. 
Now in the Mosaic account of the creation of Man, not 
a word is said about his bodily structure and organi- 
zation : we have not the slightest information as to 
whether in these respects he differed from former crea- 

* The Hom«nce of Natural History. By Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.&. 
Part IT., pp. 16-46. 



MAN MORE THAN' A BIMANOTJS CREATURE. 18S 

tions or not. There is no reference to the beauty of 
the casket, exquisite as its workmanship is : it is to the 
priceless jewel within — and, "but for which, the ani- 
mated clay would have taken its place among the 
beasts of the field : — it is to this, the moral and spiri- 
tual inhabitant of his frame, that his superiority and 
dignity is distinctly ascribed in the record of his crea- 
tion. However, many creatures may be proved to 
have existed before Adam, in the outward similitude 
of man, no one of them can be proved to have been 
made in the image of God : nor can the Mosaic 
Record be in the slightest degree invalidated as to the 
revealed fact that, subsequently to these lower creations, 
{< God made Man in his own image, and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul." 

Hence these modern researches into the tc Antiquity of 
Man," highly interesting and valuable as they unques- 
tionably are, as extending our knowledge of the natural 
history of remote ages, have not the slightest bearing 
upon the Mosaic Record. Those who maintain the con- 
trary, do so on grounds purely conjectural and imaginary ; 
and their gratuitous theories arc therefore destitute of all 
scientific value. In fact, the conclusion arrived at in 
these theories is actually assumed in the very pre- 
misses.. 

From the discovery of fossil skulls, detached fossil 
bones, and rude flint implements, it is inferred (according 
to Professor Waitz) that " we are justified to assume 
age of man to be between the extreme limits of 35,000 



186 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



and 9,000,000 years " ! Is it not an egregious abuse of the 
term to call this a scientific conclusion ? Conceding 
even the great antiquity of the specimens, what is the 
legitimate conclusion ? Why simply this : — that at the 
remote period referred to there existed a race of crea- 
tures whose fore-limbs terminated in hands, instead of 
hoofs, or paws. Can anything more than this he fairly 
inferred ? Can we, without disregarding all the whole- 
some restraints of real science, presume, on the strength 
of this evidence alone, to call such a creature Max ? 
we say, on this evidence alone, the evidence, namely, of 
the existence, prior to man, of an erect creature with 
hands. 

The flint implements add nothing to the force of the 
conclusion. Let only the existence of the hand be ad- 
mitted — a hand similar, as respects the position of the 
thumb, to that of the human being, and work, which 
the hand alone could execute, would necessarily be pro- 
duced, whether we could ever discover traces of it or 
not : for the Creator would never bestow a hand with- 
out also bestowing a capacity to use it. TVe state this 
position in the most unqualified manner; because we 
address those only who receive the hypothesis of an 
Intelligent Creator. 

V\ e submit, therefore, that it is a misnomer, and 
one implying an assumption, at the outset, of the very 
thing to be proved ; to call the researches into the an- 
tiquity of any two-handed animal, about which we 
know nothing whatever more than that he was two- 
handed : — we say it is a misnomer to call these — " Re- 



MAX DISTINGUISHED PSYSICALLY. 



187 



searches into the Antiquity oi Man " The remains of 
the assumed man are found with those of his con- 
temporary brutes which have perished and become 
extinct : how is it that he survived the catastrophe 
that destroyed them?* Even admitting that the 
biped did survive, and that he could be traced up, 
through the asserted 35,000 or 9,000,000 of years, till he 
approaches the historical period, how would that falsify 
the Mosaic Story ? There is nothing in that story to 
imply that the structural formation of the new creatures 
were all wholly unlike everything that had theretofore 
been produced and been destroyed. The words of the 
Creator, — "Let us make man i« our image, after our 
likeness/' — imply, not that an erect biped had never 
before existed, but that, till then, no creature had ever 
been created, and placed on this earth with the elevated 
psychical endowments of Man. f 

If it be not proved that the so-called man of Abbe- 
ville, and St. Acheul, and Amiens, and the Bruniqucl 
cave, was a creature of this type, to antiquity has nothing 
to do with the antiquity of the exalted moral and in- 

* It may perhaps bo asked here : — How is it that some of the contem- 
porary races of animals did survive, and exist now V We reply — The 
assertion is not proved ; nor can it be proved that these, however like 
their predecessors, were not subsequent creations. 

t In certain structured peculiarities the ape can claim a superiority 
over man : with an inferior hand, he has a superior foot. " The ape 
can use his great toe like a thumb : the human being is not quite up to 
that, but is constrained to use his great toe only for the dull and prosaic 
purpose of walking and running. Hence his differentia from his more 
highly favoured cousin the ape." See an amusing paper on " The Oppo- 
.sability of the Great Toe,"' in Church and State Revieiv, for Oct. 1, 180-t. 



188 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



tellectual being who lias tlms supplanted him, and 
to whom was given " dominion over every living 
thing that moveth upon the earth " ; which dominion 
would have extended even to the ancient flint-imple- 
ment makers themselves, had they been permitted to 
perpetuate their race up to man's advent. 

TTe are aware that this reference to the Scripture 
solution of the problem of man's origin will be 
regarded by some as irrelevant ; and the testimony, as 
matter of evidence, inadmissible. The distinguished 
President of the Anthropological Society of London, 
in his inaugural address says : — " The theologian (as 
such) has no right to interfere with the conclusions of 
physical science ; and the man of science (as such) can 
know nothing of matters of faith/ J We not only 
endorse this sentiment, but we go further : — Xot only 
can the man of science (as such) know nothing of 
matters of religious faith (which is the faith obviously 
meant in the above extract) but he can know nothing 
of matters of scientific faith. If speculative reveries, 
and scientific credulity, lead him to pronounce dogma- 
tically upon matters beyond the sphere of human 
observation — matters which, if known to man, for 
certainty, at all, can be known only through revelation, 
then, we say, that science transgresses its legitimate 
bounds, — usurps the place of a higher authority, and 
revelation has a right to expel the invader, and assert 
its own claims. 

But leaving these claims entirely out of consideration,, 
we may safely affirm, as a position conceded by all men 



MAN CREATED IX II IS NORMAL CONDITION. 189 



of science, that, in his moral and intellectual endow- 
ments., man is the most exalted being that treads this 
earth : we affirm too, without much fear of contra- 
diction, that he is also, morally and intellectually, one 
of the most degraded of beings that treads the earth. 
We need not go so far as the Adam an Islands, or the 
interior of Australia, to prove this. 

Now we would ask: — Which of these two states is 
his normal condition ? We submit that reason, and 
observation, and common sense, will answer : — The 
former. But his normal condition must surely have 
been his created condition. All our experience of the 
Creator's workmanship justifies this conclusion. When 
we contemplate the nest of a bird, the cell of a bee, 
or the web of a garden-spider, we admire the fabric, 
we exclaim — " There's evidence of Inst tact " : — and 
turn away. But there is evidence of much more than 
what we are pleased to call instinct : there is evidence 
of the surpassing perfection in which the Maker of the 
bird, the bee, and the spider, turns out his work. 

It seems to us that Anthropologists are prone to 
commence their speculations and researches at the 
wrong end. They fix upon the hnvest and most 
degraded race of savages, or. even upon a still lower 
class of creatures — bimanous brutes; and then expend 
all their labours in efforts to trace existing man from 
them; taking for granted that such must have been 
man's wretched origin. But why not start with the 
opposite assumption (both being regarded as but 
.scientific hypotheses), and take for granted that man 



190 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



Mas originally, like the bird, and the bee, — a perfect 
being; and that — since all experience shows he has 
the capacity to degenerate — the savage is only one 
of his degraded descendants, and not his primitive 
ancestor ? 

Do the advocates of the former hypothesis, we 
would ask, really believe this : — Do they believe that 
if the present Andarnans were to be for thousands of 
ages, entirely excluded from all intercourse with races 
of men superior in civilization to themselves ; — that 
none but savages like themselves should ever become 
known to them : — Do the philosophers alluded to, 
really believe that, after this total and complete 
isolation for tens of thousands of years, if a company 
of enlightened Europeans were suddenly to come 
among them, that (though the island abounded in the 
requisite materials) , the visitors would find splendid 
cities — bridges — and railroads ? That they would find 
scientific museums, and observatories replete with 
magnificent instruments, and with archives rich in the 
most exalted discoveries of astronomy? That they 
would find galleries of art, adorned with paintings 
equalling the choicest European productions ? In fact, 
all the literature, learning, science, and art, of highly 
civilised life ? 

Let it be remembered that these queries are put 
with the distinct condition that the savages never had 
any instruction from civilised man, — that they had 
never even seen man in any higher condition than 
themselves. Those to whom they are addressed must 



CAN SAVAGES BECOME SELF-CIVILISED? 191 

reply "Yes" to these questions: they arc compelled 
to do so, or else to relinquish their hypothesis as unte- 
nable. They arc compelled to admit the monstrous 
conclusion that the existing literature and science of 
Europe lias grown up from such wretched soil as this 
—from unaided, self-taught, savages in the lowest 
state of degradation; or even from a horde of crea- 
tures still lower than human savages. External aid 
from superior races is, of course, precluded; for if any 
superior race be supposed, it must have attained its 
superiority from the same level, and by the same self- 
improvement; and our queries apply to the savage 
primitives of that race. 

The now existing Andamans, and native Australians, 
can claim the same remote ancestry, which modern 
theorists assume, equally with the enlightened Euro- 
pean. The question is— not as to the antiquity of the 
Andamans, or the Australians merely,— but as to the 
antiquity of Man— the origin of the human family. 
All originally occupied the same low level (according 
to the theory), were placed in the same helpless con- 
dition, and were surrounded by the same apparently 
insuperable difficulties. And in proportion as it is 
credible that, during all these thousands of ages, the 
Andaman Islander should have done so little, — in that 
proportion is it incredible that the European should 
have done so much? Believe either of these results, 
and the tendency to disbelieve the other is irresistible 
in every mind, unbiassed by a preconceived theory, 
that calmly reflects upon the irreconcilable character 



J_92 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

of the two cases. Whereas, that companies of civilised 
men (civilised desperadoes, for instance) ,— migrating 
to uninhabited regions, and isolating themselves from 
all the advantages, and all the wholesome restraints, 
of the society they had left, might, after many ages, 
degenerate into savage hordes— is no more than what 
might reasonably be expected. And we have already 
seen (p. 173) how change of habitat can, in time, 
modify not only external aspect and colour, but also 
structural formation. 

But to return to the bipeds, herding with the now 
extinct beasts of the forest, and chipping then- flint 
implements in dens and caves : what proof is there 
that they were other than a peculiar race of two- 
handed apes — with that amount of intelligence only 
which capacitated them to use the hands given them 
for use ? 

And in order to form a reasonable notion of how 
rmch a creature, with but a small amount of brute- 
intelligence, might be able to do if he possessed the 
human hand, we need only consider how little man- 
kind would have done if the human arm had termi- 
nated in a hoof or a paw. 

The recent discovery of hint-implements with the 
outline of an animal rudely scratched upon them, has 
been thought evidence sufficient of humanity : but as 
the parrot, the bullfinch, and the American mocking- 
bird (the latter, remember, self-taught), can so well 
copy what addresses itself to the ear — where is the 
marvel that, with only a like amount of intelligence, a 



FOSSIL APE-BONES. 



193 



creature with Lands could roughly copy what is ad- 
dressed to the eye ? * 

To arrive at a complete and accurate idea of the 
external aspect and bearing of such a creature, it must 
appear before us in the living form : detached pieces 
of the bony framework merely, is surely insufficient 
for this. The specimen must be examined in its 
entirety, in order to justify any indisputable conclu- 
sion as to whether or not he is to be likened, in 
outward appearance, more to the ape, or to man. That 
he is very unlike man in stature, and in cranial capa- 
city and formation, his fossil remains prove. " If we 
are to judge of the smallness of the skull, the develop- 
ment of the jaws, and other abnormities of the crania, 
found mingled with fossil bones and flint implements, 
the conclusion is not altogether unfounded that the 
original races were inferior to the succeeding immi- 
grants, and also that the primitive race is now extinct 

* Existing monkeys and apes are designated four-handed creatures : — 
Quadrumana, because the posterior as well as the anterior limbs terminate 
in prehensile organs. But the so-called hand of the modern ape is very 
different, as well in length as in the position of the thumb, from that of 
the human being. It is adapted chiefly for grasping and climbing, 
though quite available for the support of the prone body in walking ; 
and it is a reasonable conclusion of Mr. Orawfurd, the President of the 
Ethnological Society, that " if there were no forests there would be no 
monkeys." The hand of the implement-maker may have been an organ 
much more like the human hand. Professor Owen finds, from anatomi- 
cal examination, that " the bony hand of the gorilla is ten inches in 
length ; in the man it is seven inches and one-third "; the height of the 
gorilla referred to being five feet six inches, and that of the man five feet 
nine inches. The stature of the creature whose fossil bones have been 
found is lower than that of any existing race — even of the Lapps. 

O 



19J.< MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

iii Europe, and lias shared the fate of the gigantic 
animals with which it was contemporaneous/' 

This extract is from a long and comprehensive 
article intituled " Notes on the Antiquity of Man/' 
in No. I. of The Anthropological Review. The writer 
is an advocate of the hypothesis of man's high anti- 
quity : his paper, together with similar communica- 
tions in that work, may be profitably consulted by all 
who are interested in the researches we have here been 
adverting to. But the unbiassed inquirer should read 
the several disquisitions on the Origin and Antiquity 
of Man, under a slight change of phraseology :— scien- 
tific precision renders this change necessary : For the 
term " man/' he should substitute " animal with two 
hands." The latter form of expression assumes 
nothing as to psychical elevation above the brute : the 
former, implies this distinctive superiority ; and there- 
fore involves a gratuitous, and an utterly unauthorised, 
assumption. 

The writer just quoted admits that the European- 
man is a distinct race from what he calls " the primi- 
tive race " : whether or not the Negro and the Austra- 
lian be members of this subsequently-created family, 
is a question which we think the researches of Dr. 
Pritchard and others have sufficiently disposed of (see 
p. 108) . And we have already briefly indicated how 
a community, of this European type, might degenerate 
into a savage horde (p. 192) . 

It is much more easy to conceive of this degradation 
— much more consonant with the facts of natural 



THE SAVAGE STATE XOT MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE. 1<)."> 

science— much more in accordance with the civil and 

social histories of the nations of the earth than it 

is to conceive of man rising, of himself, from so de- 
based a level up to the European standard. And since 
in addition to all this, man in Ins normal state, must 
have been the state in which he left the hands of his 
Creator — if he had a creator at all — the hypothesis of 
his brutal origin is contrary to sound inductive physical 
science — contrary to all analogy and experience of 
natural phenomena — and, at the same time, contrary 
to the clearest declarations of the Bible. Reason, ob- 
servation, Scripture, and common sense, all concur in 
shewing' that the debased condition of the bestial and 
remorseless savage is not the condition from which the 
highest type of man has risen, but the condition to 
which he has Mien : in fact, that his primitive state 
was his perfect state."* 

And now, in terminating these remarks, we would 
seriously ask any intelligent man, who is not, in the 
modem sense of the term — that is, in the Aristoteleaii 
sense, — a man of science, whether, supported as it is 
by the concurrent testimony just adverted to, this view 

* It may be proper to add that although, in the observations above, 
we have, for argument sake, conceded the high antiquity of the fossil 
ape-bones adverted to, yet we do not admit (nor deny) that antiquity ; nor 
<3ven the asserted antiquity of the Drift in which they and the imple- 
ments are found. If the flint-workers were nut really pre-Adamite 
creatures, they may haYe been human .savages : but. in what is said 
above, we have conceded that they were pre-Adamite : and have endear 
voured to shew that, be this as it may, it is incredible that civilised, in- 
tellectual, moral humanity, could ever have risen from such a miserable 
beginning-. We shall suggest a very different theory in the sequel. 



196 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

of the origin and present condition of the human race 
makes a larger demand upon hi* faith than that which 
requires him to believe —from the bare fact that a few 
bones of a small baboon-headed creature, with hands 
like those of the human being, having been discovered, 
that those bones must have been clothed with human 
flesh, covered with human skin; that the creature must 
have possessed— and consequently have invented— arti- 
culate language ; and that, though herding, with his 
fellows, among the beasts of the forest, without any 
external aid, without any example of a condition of 
existence higher than his own, he nevertheless, self- 
trained, self-instructed, self-moralised, attained to the 
science, the learning, and the social refinement, of 
modern Europe ? 

The origin of Language, like the origin of Man, is a 
subject which, without the light of revelation, is in- 
volved in impenetrable obscurity, and surrounded by 
insuperable difficulties. On the hypothesis that arti- 
culate language is of human invention, no wonder that 
Bunsen and others require tens of thousands of years 
for the formation of any spoken tongue. It is scarcely 
conceivable that articulate speech can have been other- 
wise than miraculously communicated to primitive man. 
In a state of nature, as it is called, the tones of the 
voice, expressive of emotion, and bodily sensation, and 
imitative of the calls and cries of the lower animals, 
and of other sounds and noises, in conjunction with 
natural gesticulation and expressions of countenance, 
would comprise the sole means — and, in the circum- 



LANGUAGES ALL DERIVED FROM ONE PRIMITIVE. 197 

stances, a sufficiently adequate means— of intercom- 
munication. Inarticulate language, thus constituted, 
is greatly more comprehensive and efficient than per- 
sons who have mixed but little with the deaf and dumb 
have any notion of. The want of articulate language 
could scarcely be felt in any community which had not 
already reached that social and moral elevation which 
articulate language itself can alone enable it to reach. 
The learned Professor Max Muller, after profoundly 
investigating the diversities of language, in speaking of 
the two great families, the Aryan and Semitic dialects, 
says " the analysis of the grammatical forms in either 
family has removed many difficulties, and made it at 
least intelligible how, with materials identical or very 
similar, two individuals, or two families, or two nations, 
could in the course of time have produced two lan- 
guages so different in form as Hebrew and Sanskrit/' 
And he states his conviction that, however dissimilar 
the various dialects, " they arc all nevertheless derived 
from one primeval language/' (On the Science of Lan- 
guage. Lecture VIII.) 

That the origin of man and the origin of language 
were contemporaneous, is a position that human science 
and research can never controvert ; while it is one that 
reflection and common sense urge us to accept as true, 
r If" says Professor Midler, " you wish to assert that 
language had various beginnings, you must prove it 
impossible that language could have had a common 
origin/' It is as unreasonable to suppose that our first 
parents were placed on earth without the power of 



198 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

speech, as it is to suppose they were without the 
power of locomotion. They learnt to speak just as 
much as they learnt to walk. 

The zealous anthropologist, Dr. James Hunt, says 
" It is our duty to clear away the encumbrances with 
which dogmatism and ignorance have enveloped the 
study of Man, and we must shew the public that the 
origin of man is a question of physical science which 
can have no light thrown on it by authority or tradi- 
tion." But we rather hold, with Sir John Hersehei, 

that " to ascend to the origin of things, and speculate 

on the creation, is not the business of the natural philo- 
sopher." And what is not the business of the natural 
philosopher, is not " a question of physical science/" 

Whatever be the evidence which relics discovered in 
the diluvium may furnish, to the anthropologist, of the 
existence of bimanous creatures a hundred thousand 
years ago, that evidence alone must be utterly valueless 
for the purpose of tracing the pedigree of existing. 
Man. The great point to be proved is this, namely, 
that there was no subsequent creation of superior beings : 
—that, although, as is admitted by the discoverers of 
the fossil remains themselves, there was a subsequent 
creation of quadrupeds, there could not possibly have 
been a subsequent creation of featherless bipeds. 

As soon as this indispensable proof is supplied, the 
ancient sage, who " was learned in all the wisdom of 
the Egyptians," must give place to the modern J aw- 
bone-ists ; and revelation must succumb to anthropo- 
logical " science : " but — not before. 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF PROVIXG MAX PRE - ADAM I TE. L99 

Such a proof however will never be forthcoming. 
Hoiv or when Man was first introduced on this earth, 
are questions which physical science can never answer; 
simply because they refer to events entirely beyond the 
sphere of human observation ; — inasmuch as that, ante- 
rior to his first appearance, there was no human being 
to record the phenomenon ; and if, after the fact, any 
one delivers a truthful utterance respecting it, he must 
do so — not from the light of physical science, but from 
that of inspiration. And be the existence of bimanous 
creatures, long ages before Adam, ever so clearly 
proved, the fact can have nothing whatever to do with 
the question as to whether or not distinct bimanous 
creatures, with superior psychical endowments, were 
created afterwards. 

For however legibly the finger of Time may have 
inscribed |on the bones of the pre- Adamite being the 
epoch of his death, not an atom of information, as to 
any event, then future, can possibly be indicated, — not 
even as to whether he himself was the last of his own 
race ; much less as to whether a more exalted race was 
ever to succeed him. But imagination can always 
supply what nature withholds, and there arc speculative 
philosophers "who/' to use the words of Galileo, 
£( rather than see themselves driven to pronounce these 
wise, ingenuous, and modest words — / do not know, — 
will blurt out from their tongues and pens all sorts of 
extravagancies."* 

* See the very interesting and instinctive Life of Galileo, by Mr. 
Drinkwater Bethnnc. in the Library of I r seful Knowledge, p. 72. 



200 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

It will have been perceived tliat tlic principal object 
of the present section is to put tlie general reader on 
his guard against receiving, as the revelations of 
science, the merely speculative opinions of scientific 
men. We would deprecate in the most unqualified 
manner every attempt to check investigation and 
research in any department of nature whatever ; and 
hold that no authority — not even that of the Bible — 
should be allowed to interpose to retard the advance- 
ment of genuine science. 

To suppose, however, that Revelation can ever 
oppose science — that God's word should ever belie his 
works — is an absurd supposition, involving, as it does, 
the contradiction that truth may conflict with truth. 
And we advert here to such an hypothetical anomaly 
only the more emphatically to express the sentiment 
that investigation, into any department of nature what- 
ever, is to be fearlessly prosecuted, regardless of all 
imagined consequences even to religion itself. 

We maintain equally with Mr. C. W. Goodwin, 
that physical science should go on unconcernedly 
pursuing its own paths ; but then let us always 
be sure that what assumes that name be really 
the genuine thing itself, and not a spurious 
article. The dissemination of speculative theories, 
imagined and invented for the express purpose of 
bringing the Scriptures into discredit with the un- 
thinking multitude — however they may be disavowed 
by those who know what science is. — it is the duty of 
every one to try what he can to stop : just as it is his 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 201 

duty to try to stop the circulation of the counterfeit 
coin of the realm. 

Physical science, truly so called, lias already done 
something- to elucidate certain obscure portions of 
Revelation. But the Bible can do more for science, 
than science can do for the Bible ; and if physical 
inquirers, centuries ago, had only consulted its truths— 
those merely bearing directly on their own scientific 
researches, and with a view merely to a profitable use 
in those researches of the hints they convey — many a 
modern discovery would have long since been antici- 
pated, and many a scientific error, for ages received 
as scientific truth, been avoided. The following are 
instances of this. Till less than a century ago, Dew 
was always regarded, as well by the philosopher as the 
peasant, as falling from above : but Dr. Wells proved 
by experiment that the reverse was the case — that it 
distilled from the earth. * Yet in a book 3,000 years 
old the following sentence occurs : " My doctrine 
shall drop as the rain : my speech shall distil as the 
-dew." Less than fifty years ago, it was universally 
supposed that storms always took a direct, or nearly a 
direct course ; but since then, scientific observers have 
fully established the fact that the contrary is the case ; 
and hence the modern theory : — "The Rotatory Law 
•of Storms." Yet Solomon says — " The wind gocth 
towards the south, and turneth about unto the north : 
it whirleth about continually ; and the wind returneth 

* Wells : Essay on Dev:. This small work is regarded ns a model of 
^experimental inquiry. 



202 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



again according to Iris circuits/' (Ecc. i. 6.) And in 
the chapter here referred to there is also anticipated, 
in a few words, the correct theory of terrestrial evapo- 
ration, — cloud-formation, — and rain. 

Yet in spite of this, and of many other plain state- 
ments of philosophical truth, in the Hebrew writings, 
Bishop Colenso— though knowing that the Bible is in 
everybody's hands — has the hardihood to declare that 
the Hebrew writers believed and taught that rain 
came from celestial reservoirs above a solid firmament, 
through doors and windows; and supports the un- 
truthful assertion by a reference to the obviously 
figurative portions of the language of the sacred Poets? 

His aspersions and perversions of the Divine Record 
are as reprehensible as — what we cannot but call — the 
Cant with which he interlards them is offensive. If he 
be not in his right mind, he is to be commiserated : if 
he be, he is to be contemned; — not for his "free 
handling," but for iris unfair handling, of the sacred 
Scriptures. 

The following arc exemplifications sufficient, as to 
what the Hebrews really considered to be the source 
of rain : — 

Judges, v. 4 : — " The clouds also dropped water." 

Job, xxxvi. 27, 28: — " For he maketh small the 
drops of water : they pour down rain according to the 
vapour thereof ; which the clouds do drop." 

Psalm, lxxvii. 17 : — " The clouds poured out water." 

Ecclc., xi. 3 :— " If the clouds be full of rain, they 
empty themselves upon the earth." 



THEORY OF HUYGENS DERIVED FROM THE BIBLE. 203 

But it may be said that, in some of these instances 
the discoveries of physical science have themselves 
suggested meanings which the scriptural passages 
could not previously have conveyed : whether this be 
so or not, every reader can judge for himself. At all 
events, in what we are now about to quote, such an 
objection is utterly precluded. In the year 1690, the 
celebrated Huygens published a theory of refraction 
and reflection, founded on the hypothesis, that Light, 
like Sound, was propagated by the undulations of a 
subtile and elastic medium, which he supposed to per- 
vade all space. Newton, his contemporary, held that 
Light was corporeal, and composed of minute cor- 
puscles which were emitted from the luminous body : 
the two theories have been distinguished by the names 
"The Undulatory Theory and "The Corpuscular 
Theory." The former failed to obtain acceptance 
among men of science till about the commencement 
of the present century. But it has now replaced the 
corpuscular theory ; and, in Physical Optics, has 
become part and parcel of " modern science." 

Now this important addition to modern science 
might at any time, during the last 3,000 years, have 
been deduced from what is clearly revealed in the first 
chapter of Genesis : and from this source alone, the 
physical principle of the philosopher Huygens actually 
tuas deduced more than a century ago, by a theological 
writer who knew nothing about Huygens or his hypo- 
thesis ; and who, if he had ever read anything about 
optics at all, must, in common with the rest of his 



204 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



contemporaries, have studied the subject as expounded 
by the corpuscular theory. 

The theological writer here alluded to is Dr. J. 
Taylor ; and the extract which follows is from a work 
intituled "A Scheme of Scriptural Divinity, formed 
upon the plan of the Divine Dispensations. With a 
Vindication of the Sacred Writings. By J. Taylor, 
D.D. London, 1762." It was reprinted by Bishop 
Watson in 1785.* Dr. Taylor thus writes : — 

" There is one difficulty remaining, namely, that 
light was created before the sun. Whereas the sun is 
supposed to be the sole fountain of light, by emitting 
luminous particles from its body. But I suspect the 
truth of this hypothesis : and Moses may be found a 
more accurate philosopher than is commonly imagined. 
It appears from electrical experiments, that light is a 
-distinct substance from all other, as much as air is 
from water; and that, by being properly excited, it 
may be made to appear in midnight darkness. Which 
shews, that it did exist in that darkness, previously to 
its being excited. Consequently it may, and, I doubt 
not, doth exist, expanded through the whole visible 
system of things at all times, by night as well as by 
day ; and that the sun, a fiery body, is, in our system, 
the great exciter, by which the substance of light is 
impelled, and becomes visible. For were there no 
substance of light previously existing throughout the 
whole system, no light would appear, though ten thou- 
sand suns should at once be placed in our hemispheres. 

* Watson's Theological Tracts, vol. 1. 



THEORY Or HUYGENS DERIVED PROM THE BIBLE. 205 

Just as the ringing of the bell produces sound, not by 
an emanation of particles from the substance of the 
bell, but by exciting the air, or the sounding sub- 
stance, without which the bell could produce no sound 
at all. As the air will not sound, so the light will not 
appear without being excited. Upon this supposition 
the element or substance of light was created on the 
first day, and the divine power alone might be the 
exciter, which made the light appear for the three 
first days of creation, until the sun, the instrumental 
exciter, was produced." 

In reference to this remarkable passage, Bishop 
Watson says—" N.B. Dr. Taylor, sometime after he 
had finished this scheme of Scripture divinity, met with 
the same thought and reasoning in the ingenious 
author of Nature Displayed; and Avas not a little 
pleased to find an hypothesis, which he judged peculiar 
to himself, adopted by so deep an inquirer into nature." 
The Bishop then adds a long extract from the work 
here mentioned, and in which the independent existence 
of the material of light is also maintained, and the 
Mosaic account of the production of light before the 
creation of the sun shewn to be consistent with truth, 
on the hypothesis that light, like sound, is not matter, 
but motion : which is the hypothesis (or rather the 
inference from Scripture) of Dr. Taylor, quoted above. 
If the author of the foregoing observations had been 
acquainted with the fact that so celebrated a man as 
Huygens, had regarded wiiat is thus deduced from 
Scripture, as the independent testimony of physical 



206 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



science, lie would no doubt have appealed to that 
testimony in confirmation of the accuracy of his view 
of the Biblical account of the production of light 
before the sun. And if Bishop Watson, at the time of 
reprinting those observations, — which however was long 
before the undulatory theory had been generally 
received— had himself been aware of the hypothesis of 
Huvgens, he would scarcely have failed to have alluded 
to it, with a similar object. Hence the conclusion is 
irresistible that a scientific theory of light, dating its 
existence, as such, only from the beginning of the 
present century, is founded upon an hypothesis which 
was fully announced nearly 40 years before, as a 
physical truth, implied in the Mosaic account of the 
creation; and that too by a theologian, who, if he 
knew anything at all of the physical science of his 
time, must have known that it was opposed to what he 
perceived to be, and what he explicitly declared to be, 
the doctrine of revelation. No doubt when a physical 
theory has received the sanction and imprimatur of 
science, a hint or two may be discovered in the Bible 
in apparent accordance with it. But here is an instance 
in which, independently of science altogether, a most 
profound and difficult department of physical research, 
founded on an obscure hypothesis which science was 
very slow to adopt, but which it has at length been 
compelled to receive — an hypothesis the necessary con- 
sequences of which it requires the very highest 
mathematics to develop — here, we say, is an instance 
in which even so recondite a subject as the modern 



ORIGIN AND USE OF TIIK FLINT-IMPLEMENTS. \li)7 

physical theory of the propagation of Light, is m its 
principle, actually anticipated by a man who knew 
nothing about it, beyond what the Bible had taught 
Urn, except that it was opposed to the prevailing 
science of the day. We are fully aware bow injudicious 
it is, when any physical hypothesis has been devised, 
to search the Book of Revelation for whatever may 
seem either to confirm or contradict it; since the 
legitimate office of such an hypothesis is simply to 
explain the phenomena, and to shew that they Mould 
be logically deduciblc from the development of what 
is implied in it, be it the embodiment of a real prin- 
ciple in nature or not. But the instance here adduced 
is unique. In this, the Bible and Science have bad, as 
it were, no communication :— two totally distinct and 
independent witnesses, without any collusion, have 
both testified to precisely the same thing, and that 
thing not a simple matter of even -day observation, 
but one that man, unless aided by the profoundest 
science, could not have unveiled. 



In so much of the foregoing discussion as relates to 
the supposed evidence for the antiquity of man, as 
furnished by worked flint implements discovered in 
ancient deposits, we have carefully abstained from 
offering any theory of our own respecting their origin 
and use. AVe have restricted ourselves to an examina- 
tion of the degree of proof these antique implements 
afford towards establishing the doctrine that man was 
coeval with the formation or deposition of the diluvium 



208 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

iii which they are found. And admitting (hypotheti- 
cally) that they were really the fabrications of pre- 
Adamite creatures, we hare endeavoured to shew that 
the evidence they supply is far too weak and scanty to 
justify the conclusion that they were the productions 
of human beings : that, as M. Castelnau has remarked 
(Anthropological Society of Paris, Seance, November 

17, 1859) . " Much more mental energy would not be 

required by the gorilla to produce similar instru- 
ments/' 

But we have our own individual opinions on the 
subject: we have reserved the expression of them for 
these concluding pages of our volume. TTe do not 
regard the smaller of the cafs-tongues (so called by 
the French excavators on account of their form) as 
hatchets at all : — we do not regard them as offensive or 
defensive weapons. From their plileme-like shape, we 
consider them to have been surgical instruments ; and 
to have been used almost, if not quite, exclusively for 
the religious rite of circumcision. 

No satisfactory explanation has ever been given of 
the fact that these instruments are so generally found 
in large collections in particular spots. It has been 
supposed that the circumstance indicated the place of 
their manufacture, as their deposit in such numbers 
could not have been accidental, baskets full of them 
having been dug out of the same place, and used by 
the workmen for repairing the roads. 

Now we consider such localities to have been in the 
vicinity of sanctuaries, or holy places, in very remote, 



ORIGIX AND USE OF THE FLfXT-1 M IMJIM ENTS. 209 

but still in post-diluvian, times. Such sanctuaries 
would, of course, have been sufficiently supplied with 
suitable instruments for the performance of the rite of 
circumcision. It is very likely that when blunted, or 
broken, they would still have had a degree of sacred- 
ness attached to them, and have been religiously pre- 
served. It may have been that a new phleme was 
used to every new subject. In this way the instru- 
ments fallen into disuse would, in the course of years, 
accumulate to a considerable number, and require to 
be disposed of. What more natural,— considering the 
religious respect with which they would be regarded, 
than that they should be deposited far out of the 
reach of sacrilegious hands,— buried deep in the earth, 
to secure them from being disturbed and abstracted 
by the profane, and desecrated to base or unholy pur- 
poses ? Instruments of similar shape, but of larger 
size, — and more strictly entitled to the name of 
hatchets, as also spears, and knives, would be kept in 
the same sanctuaries for the sacrificial duties. These 
would not so rapidly fall into disuse : keenness of edge 
would not be a matter of so much solicitous considera- 
tion as it would be in an instrument employed upon the 
human subject. Still, such of them as had become 
unfit for service would, nevertheless, possess a degree of 
sanctity; and would be disposed of in a similar way. 

No doubt hatchets, like in shape to the sacred im- 
plements, would also be used for domestic and secular 
purposes, even in the sacred edifices themselves. It 
would be necessary carefully to separate and distin- 



i' 



210 MODERN SCEPTICISM, 

guish these from the others ; and how more effectually 

could the secular be distinguished from the sacred 

implement, than by figuring, upon the face of the 

former the outline of some unclean animal ? 

In places remote from any sanctuary or tabernacle, 

the father might perform the duties of priest for his 

own family ; and the sacred instruments, when there 

would be no future occasion for them in the household, 

would, in like manner, be deposited deep in the ground, 

from the same all-pervading feeling of religious respect ; 

and thus isolated worked flints might be sometimes 

discovered in such deposits. 

It would be by no means remarkable if a secular 

hatchet, — one with the outline of a horse, or some other 
unclean animal figured upon it, were found buried with 
the sacred implements : the anxiety would be that all 
these latter should be secured from irreverent molesta- 
tion, and not that every foreign body should be 
excluded from mixing with them. 

From the above considerations we conclude that the 
worked flints have no chronological connection what- 
ever with the stratum in which they are found, or with 
the fossil bones of extinct animals in proximity to 
them ; and that they are not only of post-Adamite but 
of post-diluvian fabrication. 

The uncivilized inhabitants of certain of the Papuan 
Islands perform circumcision upon their male offspring 
to the present day. They derived the practice from 
their ancestors ; but know not how it originated : it 



OBSERVANCES OF THE PAPUAN ISLANDERS 2] 1 

had been observed from time immemorial,— ages before 
any missionary bad appeared among them."* Hon m 
when was the custom introduced? It cannot be but 
that it was imported with the aboriginals themselves ;— 
the descendants of " the families of the sons of Noah : 
by these were the nations divided in the earth after the 
flood." (Genu. 32). t j , 

An early specimen of the stone implement used by 
the Papuans would be a highly interesting relic*: we 
should be able to ascertain from such a specimen 
whether or not it was like the ancient " cat's tongue ^ 
instruments, found in such numbers, and always of 
such similarity of shape, elsewhere. " A great charac- 
teristic of worked flints is their striking resemblance 
to each other in almost every country where thev have 
been found. Individually each diluvian implement 

* See Nineteen Years in Polynesia. By the Rev. (*. Turner. We 
learn from this work, that the Papuans have the following tradition re- 
specting the creation. " The first man, who had previously been stone, 
thought one day he would make a woman. He collected the light earth 
on the surface of the ground in the form of a human body, with head, 
arms, and legs. He then plucked out one of his left ribs, and thrust if 
into the breast of his earth model. Instantly the earth became alive, 
and up started a woman. He called her Ivi (according to English ortho- 
graphy, it would be Evee), which is their word for rib." P. 323. 

It seems to us that this remarkable tradition, coupled with the fact 
noticed in the text above, namely, that so remote and isolated a race of 
human beings should feel it to be a duty to perform the rite of circum- 
cision, is a significant illustration of the Scripture truth — that God " hath 
made of one blood all-nations of men," (Acts xvii. 26) ; and that it refutes 
the theory of the learned Professor Agassiz — that the different races of 
men are originally distinct and separate creations ; each peculiar race 
having sprung from a " Specific Centre," remote and apart from every 
other specific centre. ■ t ' ♦ 



212 MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

may be considered an accident: but when viewed 
collectively, and it is seen that the chips have been 
taken off in the same places and in the same manner, 
presenting identical forms, obviously the result of 
identical intention, we are irresistibly led to the con- 
clusion that the hand of man has done it. Wherever 
they have been found, whether in the east or in the 
west, in the north or in the south, they resemble each 
other in form, though they may differ in finish."* 

This identity of form surely implies application to a 
common purpose ; while the wide distribution implies 
the general desire and aim to accomplish that pur- 
pose ; as though the accomplishment of it was enjoined 
by some legal enactment, — human or divine. "What 
the purpose was we have here ventured to conjecture : 
and have we think accounted, in a reasonable manner, 
for what has hitherto been a phenomenon of a very 
perplexing kind to antiquarian and pseleontological 
speculators, namely, the accumulation of such numbers 
of worked flints in geological strata where the remains 
of the men who worked them are not to be found. We 
submit that these remains must be sought for in 
situations above the deposits in which the flints are 
imbedded, — in soil of an immensely less remote age, 
on which the workers themselves lived, and there 
fabricated the implements which were afterwards buried 
in the lower beds whence they have now been dug. 

It is stated that, in excavating for these implements, 
no trace is discoverable of the superincumbent soil 

* Anthropological Review, vol. I., p. 82. 



WHEN WERE THE IMPLEMENTS IMBEDDED ? 213 

having been previously disturbed. But the flints may 
have been imbedded centuries even before the time of 
Moses ; and surely water, percolating for between 
three and four thousand years, would have consoli- 
dated the earthy materials sufficiently to have obliter- 
ated all such traces ages ago. It must be remembered 
too that the superincumbent soil must have greatly 
increased since the period referred to, — the original 
depth of the buried implements having been very 
much less than that at which they are now found. 

The discovery of a solitary skeleton, really human, 
here and there, at the same depth, should such disco- 
very ever be made, ought to excite no surprise. A 
man who had long exercised the priestly function, and 
been eminent for piety, might have had the honour 
conferred upon his remains of interment in the same 
bed with the instruments of his sacred office.* 

It is impossible to foresee, and anticipate what ob- 
jections may be made to the views here submitted to 
candid consideration. It may perhaps be said that 
deep excavations could not be executed with the stone 
implements at command. This may be true. But the 
use of sharpened flints, as cutting instruments, does 
not necessarily imply unacquaintance with metallic 
tools. The ages of stone, and bronze, and iron, arc 

* The minimum length of time necessary to fossilize an embedded 
hone is confessedly a matter of great uncertainty. " It is now ascer- 
tained that bones of recent animals, introduced into old deposits, may 
assume, in a comparatively short time, the condition of the bones 
of extinct animals." — Notes on tlic Antiquity of Man. Anthropological 
Hevieio, vol. I., p. 68. 



214 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



by no means of sharply defined limits. It is well 
known that stone implements are employed, even at 
the present day, among tribes quite familiar with iron, 
and possessing articles of that metal, — a material, 
however, too costly to be generally used instead of the 
more eas ilv accessible .stone. Besides ; instruments of 
a particular material, that from time immemorial had 
been employed in the performance of the sacerdotal 
duties, would be very likely to be retained in use, and 
continue to be fabricated, long after the introduction 
of a superior material for secular purposes, 

If, however, the views here advanced, should be 
shewn, upon good and sufficient grounds, to be unte- 
nable, and that the worked flints found in the old 
gravel-beds of Abbeville, Amiens, kc., are indisputably 
the fabrications of pre-Adamite creatures, then we 
affirm, for reasons already given in the foregoing essay, 
that to pronounce these creatures to have been human 
beings is a conclusion far too weighty for the pre- 
misses to support ; that, however closely such a 
creature may have approached to Adam in physical 
structure, he was immeasurably below him in psychi- 
cal and spiritual endowments. The Scripture does 
not state that Adam was unlike every previously- 
created being in bodily conformation. It does not 
say, — " Let us make a new physical organism," nor 
even, simply, K Let us make man." But the words 
are — "Let us make man in our own image." And 
God breathed into him, (that man) the breath of life. 



THE PRE- AD AMITE MAN NOT THE HUMAN BEING. 215 

" And Man [that man, not the pre-Adamite] became 
a living soul." 

This is the Man, — the man of the Bihle, in whom 
the human family feel, we presume, the deeper 
interest, and not the brute pre-Adamite creature 
which certain anthropologists dignify with that appel- 
lation. The origin of the one is revealed to us from 
above : — it could never have been discovered by dig- 
ging for him below. With the other creature, how- 
ever, the case is different. According to the president 
of the Anthropological Society, who imagines him to 
have existed, ct the origin of [that~\ Man is a question 
of physical science which can have no light thrown on 
it by authority or tradition." 

But what light lias physical science hitherto thrown, 
or is likely to throw hereafter, even upon his origin ? 
No indisputably authentic remains of this supposititious 
pre-Adamite man have ever been discovered in the 
■drift in which the worked flints attributed to him arc 
imbedded. And even, as is very likely, if a solitary 
skeleton were to be discovered in the same stratum, — 
what then ? Would the presence of one dead man in 
any place necessarily imply the former existence, in 
that place, of a community of living men, working their 
flint implements on what was then exposed soil ? On 
the hypothesis of a pre-Adamite race of men, there 
might be no difficulty in accounting for his presence ; 
but, on the same hypothesis, there would be very great 
difficulty in accounting for the absentees : — what has 
become of them ? How much more likely, cither that 



216 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



a corpse was interred there, as suggested above, or that 
some poor lonely wanderer upon the upper surface, long 
ages ago, had slipped into a cleft, now closed, and there 
perished ! * We submit that satisfactorily to establish 
the pre- Adamite theory, the workmen should be found 
in abundance as well as their works. 

A solitary jawbone, reputed to be a human fossil, 
was extracted a short time ago from a flint-bed at 
Abbeville ; and, in consequence, great stir was made 
about " the fossil man of Abbeville/' and the hatchets 
found near him. The late lamented and eminent Dr. 
Hugh Falconer, with other distinguished men, took 
immense pains in the investigation of this matter on 
the spot. The results were communicated by Dr. 
Falconer to the Times (April 25, 1863), and these 
are his conclusions : — " First, the flint hatchets were 
pronounced by highly competent experts (Evans and 
Prestwich) to be spurious ; secondly, the reputed fossil 
molar was proved to be recent : thirdly, the reputed 
fossil jaw shewed no character different from those that 
may be met with in the contents of a London church- 
yard. The inference which I draw from these facts is 
that a very clever imposition has been practised by the 
terrassiers of the Abbeville gravel-pits — so cunningly 
clever that it could not have been surpassed by a com- 
mittee of anthropologists enacting a practical joke." 

It is quite possible, however, that the specimen may be 
genuine after all. It is repudiated solely because it is not 
* See the footnote at page 213. ' 



THE ABBEVILLE JAW-BOM!. 



217 



of the same vast age as the drift in which the flints are 
deposited, though it may be as old as the flints them- 
selves. Or, if the hope of obtaining the large reward 
offered to the " navvies" for the discovery of relics of 
this kind, — and which is known to have operated on 
their ingenuity to a great extent, enabling them to 
fabricate ancient flint hatchets in any number that may 
be wanted, — if this hope impelled the unscrupulous 
(so alleged) but sagacious "navvy" in question to 
transfer an old jawbone, from a neighbouring grave, to 
the grave of the flint implements, he may uncon- 
sciously, and by sheer good luck, have actually brought 
into juxtaposition the ivork with so much of the very 
workman who executed it. 

Be this, hoAvcver, as it may ; it is certainly hard ' 
upon the poor navvies to withhold from them their 
promised reward, merely because they cannot make 
the bones they And older than they are. As to the 
particular bone in question, we cannot concur in Dr. . 
Falconer's conclusion that it was unquestionably 
spurious. It seems that "on the 28th of March 
M. de Perthes was summoned to the gravel-pit of 
Moulin- Quignon to examine, in situ, what appeared to 
be a portion of bone projecting from the cliff of the 
section close to its base. The specimen was carefully 
detached with his own hands, by M. de Perthes, and 
proved to be the entire half of an adult human lower 

jaw If the jaw proved to be authentic, 

and came out of the alleged position, it indicated man, 
by an actual bone, at a period of extremely remote 



218 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



antiquity." The jaw proved peculiar from "the odd 

conjunction of unusual characters it presented 

But Mr. Tomes's abundant collection brought the 
matter speedily to a point. From the pick of a sackful 
of human lower jaws, yielded by an old London church- 
yard, he produced a certain number which severally 
furnished all the peculiarities of the Abbeville speci- 
men, although not one of them shelved them all in 
conjunction/ 3 " We then," says Dr. Falconer, u pro- 
ceeded to saw up the detached molar found at Moulin- 
Quignon. It proved to be quite recent; the section 
was white, glistening, full of gelatine, and fresh- 
looking. There was an end to the case." But why 
all this careful and rigid examination of the specimen, 
if there had not been the complete absence of every 
indication of its surreptitious introduction into the 
deposit whence M. de Perthes — one of the most expe- 
rienced persons in Europe — extracted it with his own 
hands ? The fact is, the bone was not old enough, — 
it was clearly not pre- Adamite ; theory required that 
it should be : — it was therefore spurious. 

We terminate this work with the following observa- 
tions, (referring to topics discussed in the preceding 
pages) , by a philosopher of the highest reputation. 



ON THE DIFFERENT RACES OF MEN. 



219 



NOTE (page 173). 

In reference to Recent Speculations on the Different 
Races of Men. 
" In thus reviewing- the evidence elicited by the dis- 
closures of American archaeology and ethnology, I 
have pursued the previously recorded researches with 
no favourite theory to maintain, but have anxiously 
striven to arrive at an impartial decision as to what are 
the legitimate deductions from the evidence. The de- 
termination of the relations which the man of America 
bears to the European or Asiatic man is felt to involve 
such important results, that this very fact has helped 
to impede the progress of truth. The assailant, has, 
perhaps, felt emboldened at times by the very gravity 
of the issues imperilled by his attack; while the ad- 
herents to a faith in the all comprehensive brotherhood 
of man, have rather entrenched themselves in their 
wn strongholds then fairly met their opponents on 
the open field of scientific enquiry. Scientific truths, 
whatever be the interest they involve, can only be de- 
termined on scientific grounds ; and on such only has 
any attempt been made to base them in this work. But 
if an inquiry thus honestly and impartially pursued — like 
a problem wrought out by algebraic notation — brings 
out a result precisely corresponding to conclusions 
already determined by wholly independent proof, it 
■cannot be unacceptable, even to those who stand in no 
need of its confirmation. Such has been my experience 



220 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



in the present inquiry. The snbject presented itself in 
novel aspects ; the results, whatever they should prove 
to be, were welcome, since I had no preconceived theory 
at stake ; but as the subject has expanded before me, 
I have more and more been convinced how needless a 
thing it is to supplant ancient beliefs, from too ready 
a yielding to the seductive temptations of novel, and 
seemingly simple hypotheses, which commend them- 
selves to the judgment by their apparent solution of 
difficulties. 

"It is little more than three and a-half centuries 
since the men of the Old and New World met face to 
face. For unknown ages before that, America had 
been a world within herself, with nations, languages, 
arts, and civilization of her own : and the whole ten- 
dency of that later American science, which also claims 
to be native, though the product of a race of European 
descent, has been to make of the red man a distinct 
race and species. I have approached the inquiry pur- 
sued in the previous chapters with an earnest desire to 
avoid prejudging this question, or testing it on other 
than purely scientific evidence. But the result has 
been to satisfy me that there is no ground for separating 
the American from the Asiatic man ; but that, on the 
contrary, greater difficulties exist in reconciling our be-? 
lief in the descent of all men from a common stock when 
we proceed to compare some of the diverse tribes and 
nations of the Asiatic continent, than any that interfere 
with our acceptance of the dogma that the Mongols of 
Asia and America are one. 



ON THE DIFFERENT RACES OF MEN. 221 

"In the ingenious speculations on the origin of 
species by which Charles Darwin has startled the scien- 
tific world, he remarks, as he draws his first abstract 
to a close, < the whole history of the world, as at pre- 
sent known, although of a length quite incomprehensi- 
ble by us, will hereafter be recognised as a mere frag- 
ment of time, compared with the ages which have elapsed 
since the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable 
extinct and living descendants, was created. In the 
distant future I see open fields for far more important 
researches : Psychology will be based on a new founda- 
tion, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental 
power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown 
on the origin of man and his history/ Already the 
speculations of Darwin have done good service to the 
ethnologist, though not in the way he intended or 
imagined they should. They will not persuade him 
that the universe is a product of measured and beautiful 
motion, within which this earth-planet has gone cycling 
on according to fixed laws, until, from the simplest 
monad or life-germ, endless forms of wonder and beauty 
have been evolved, closing at length with the evolu- 
tion of man as the latest and crowning work of such 
development ; but they may give a new force to the 
persuasion of many, that time and external influences 
supply all the requisite elements for the evolution of 
varying tribes from a common stock. Mr. Darwin has 
not succeeded, in the whole course of his ingenious 
argument, though returning to it again and again, in 
tracing the slightest indications of that favourite illus- 



222 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



tration of the instability of species, the Pigeon, being 
developed out of any essentially distinct form. But he 
has shewn that pigeons have been subject to the influ- 
ences of domestication and of civilisation for thousands 
of years : that one of the most favourable circumstances 
for the production of distinct breeds is to be traced to 
the fact, that male and female pigeons can be easily 
mated for life ; and that they have been found capable 
of domestication alike on Northern Europe, in Egypt, 
and in southern India. Selecting some of the greatest 
of known extremes within the natural family of Colum- 
bidce subject to such influence, he remarks : — 'Although 
an English carrier, or short-faced tumbler, differs im-' 
mensely in certain characters from the rock-pigeon, 
yet, by comparing the several sub-breeds of these breeds, 
more especially those brought from distant countries/ 
we can make an almost perfect series between the 
extremes of structure/ In so far as these are well- 
accredited facts, entirely independent of the theory 
they are advanced to maintain, they furnish interesting 
analogies readily applicable to the so-called races of 
men/' (Wilson's Pre-Historic Man : pp. 457 — 459.) 



ox the miracle of joshua. 



223 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. 

ON THE MIRACLE OF JOSH UA. 

In a former volume- I have discussed the miracle 
recorded in the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua on 
the hypothesis that our English rendering of verse 13, 
namely, " So the sun stood still in the midst of Heaven,' 
and hasted not to go down about a whole day/' was a 
correct translation of the Hebrew original. ' It is this 
English version that Dr. Colenso receives ; and it was 
in reference to the impossibilities, which he alleges to 
be implied in the statement, that the discussion alluded 
to was entered upon, for the purpose of shewing that 
the miraculous occurrence could have been brought 
about without any violation of physical laws. 

But since the publication of that book, I have been 
informed by a learned friendf that nearly two centuries 
ago a profound Hebrew scholar and divine— the Bev. 
Brian Taylor— had translated the passage referred to 
differently, affirming that the strict meaning of the 
Hebrew is — that " the sun hasted not to go down about 
the time of the whole day's completion/' when, but for 
the miracle, it would have set. Its apparent stationary 
altitude in the Heavens, instead^ of lasting twenty-four 
hours, may thus have lasted not more than one hour, 

* Science. Elucidative of Scripture, page 17b.' 
f Dr. Fraser Halle. a . , 



22-i MODERN SCEPTICISM. 

or even so much. " And the sun stood still, and the 
moon stayed " [not 24 hours, but only] "until the 
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies/' 
Josh. x. 13. 

Taking this view of the text, the phenomena could 
have been produced by much simpler secondary causes 
than those which I had suggested as competent to pro- 
long (apparently) the stay of the sun and moon for 
twenty-four hours. 

Everybody knows that the sun (and indeed every hea- 
venly body) always appears to be above the horizon some 
time before it rises and after it sets ;* the phenomenon 
being caused by the refraction, or bending downwards, 
of the sunbeams by the atmosphere in their passage 
through it. The greater the accumulation of air is to- 
wards the West, or the greater the superincumbent pres- 
sure, the denser will be the atmospheric strata through 
which the rays have to pass, in their progress to the 
eye, and therefore the longer will the apparent setting 
of the sun be delayed. Now suppose that immediately 
before the command of Joshua, there was an accumu- 
lation of atmosphere towards the East, or the quarter 
in which the moon was ; the air drawn from the West, 
and from surrounding regions, being heaped up, form- 
ing a high atmospheric tide, while there was a low tide 
in the West. 

The moon's rays, upon entering the protuberant 

mass, would become bent downwards ; and would thus 

* The sun's diameter, to the nearest minute, is 32', while the hori- 
zontal refraction is 33' ; sometimes more. 



ON THE MIRACLE OF JOSHUA. 226 

pass into the upper stratum of the original atmosphere 
more inclined to the vertical than they would have 
done but for this superincumbent body of air: the 
moon would thus appear proportionally more elevated : 
and this apparent elevation would be further increased 
if the protuberant surface, where the pays entered, 
were more oblique to the direction of those" rays, so as 
to increase the angle of incidence. 

In this abnormal condition of the atmosphere, the 
moon would appear unusually high • while the height 
of the sun would be a little less than ordinary, because 
of the abstraction of air from the western region. 

Conceive this high atmospheric tide— at the instant 
of the command— to commence flowing from the east to 
the west, the air in the west continuing gradually to 
accumulate— and that in the east to diminish, till a 
western tide, sufficient for the purpose, had been pro- 
duced. It is obvious that, throughout the whole of 
this gradual process of transference, the continuously 
diminishing depth of air would cause a continuous 
diminution of the moon's apparent altitude ; and that 
the continuously increasing depth of air, in the oppo- 
site quarter, would, at the same time, cause a con- 
tinuous increase of the sun's apparent altitude. And 
the adjustment might plainly be such that these 
atmospheric causes would exactly balance and coun- 
teract the moon's vertical motion upwards, and the 
sun's vertical motion downwards, so that the apparent 
altitude of each body would be preserved unaltered till 
the atmosphere began to assume its normal condition ; 



226 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



during its return to which the sun would be rapidly 
descending, and would speedily sink behind Gibeon, 
while the moon would gradually ascend. 

It is plain, from the narrative, that the sun, when 
the miracle commenced, was on the point of setting 
behind the city. Tv'e have supposed however that the 
moon at this time was ascending; but if the contrary 
were the case, then the two atmospheric tides, alluded 
to above, must have existed simultaneously, gradually 
rising and gr aduallv subsiding together. And indeed 
it seems more probable that the moon, like the sun, 
would be stayed from descending, not from ascending : 
bat whichever may have been the case, both moonlight 
and sunlight would have been prolonged by means of 
the atmospheric changes here described. We have 
reasoned above on the hypothesis that the moon was 
rising, chiefly because that is the view which presents 
the greater apparent difficulty." [It is most likely 
that the battle took place at that season of the year 
when the days were short.] 

It thus appears that, in whichever of the two senses 
the text in question be taken, the miracle may have been 
wrought without any of that violation, or suspension, of 
the laws of nature which Bishop Colenso assumes to 
have been unavoidable. Supernatural agency was, of 
course, put forth : we say " of course, " because if 

* Trie heaping up of the air may be regarded as analogous to the 
heaping up of the waters in the passage through the Red Sea. " The 
waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap." 
Ex. xv. 8. 



ON THE MIRACLE OF JOSHUA. 227 

the phenomena had been independent of the direct in- 
terposition of Omnipotent power, they would not have 
been recorded, as we find them to be, in the Bible. 
We are there told plainly enough that there was a 
miraculous prolongation of the day : and whether the 
sun hasted not to go down till an additional rotation of 
the earth had been completed (about a whole day), or 
only hasted not to go down when its time for going- 
down, naturally, was near at hand,— a whole day being 
then almost completed,— in either case the Divine in- 
terposition implied no infringement of any physical 
law ; but simply the putting forth of a power which, 
though not of nature, operated in harmonious concert 
with nature. And the atmosphere alone need have 
been the only instrumental means employed, in the 
arresting the vertical motion of the sun and moon for 
a short period. It is absurd to insist that the actual 
motions of the earth and moon must have been stopped 
to accomplish what could have been as well brought 
about by merely modifying the condition of the earth's 
atmosphere. 

In what is suggested above we have considered the 
modification to have taken place in the upper regions 
of the atmosphere ; but changes of temperature in the 
lower atmospheric strata, when they are such as to pro- 
duce any considerable departure from the normal con- 
dition, are often attended with phenomena very similar 
to those here commented upon. In that peculiar state 
of the air near the earth's surface which causes mirage 
the vertical displacements of objects in the distant 



228 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



horizon, or a little above or below it, are often very 
considerable. The Rev. Dr. Scoresby (then Captain 
Scoresby), in one of his Greenland voyages, once saw 
his father's ship, elevated in the air, and recognized it 
to be his, although the observer was ignorant of the fact 
that his father was then in those seas. But upon the 
two ships afterwards meeting it was found that the 
elder Scoresby was very many miles below the horizon 
of his son's position at the time of observation. 

M. Bravais, in his able article on the Mirage in the An- 
nualize Meteorblogique for 1852, relates the following : — 

" Before entering the bay of Kaafiord, we leave on 
the left a little peninsula which forms the bay, and 
which juts out into the sea, with a uniform elevation 
of about a yard and a-half above the water. Beyond 
that, and within the bay, a schooner was lying at. 
anchor — the hull of which rose out of the water about 
two yards. The land lay so that the deck of the 
schooner would naturally have been quite hidden from 
us ; yet I saw, from our distance, not merely the whole 
of the hull and its line of floatation, but, besides, a little 
of the reversed image, all of them above the little 
peninsula. ... As we approached the peninsula, 
the schooner appeared to sink very rapidly behind it, 
and the hull became at length quite concealed from us,, 
just as it would have been at any distance, had it not 
been for the remarkable refractions to which the 
phenomenon was due/'' 

The above and numerous similar instances that are 
on record, sufficiently shew how peculiar states of the 



ON THE MIRACLE OF JOSHUA. OOQ 

lower strata of the atmosphere, as to temperature, may 
cause the apparent elevation of objects either in the 
distant horizon or at a small angular depression below 
it. These are, of course, natural, though not very com- 
mon phenomena : but their actual occurrence demon- 
strates the possibility of the secondary agency, in the 
miracle recorded in the Book of Joshua, being a natural 
agency, namely, the refracting powers of the atmosphere, 
the physical conditions necessary to the production of the 
phenomena, and which (so to speak) are often assumed 
spontaneously, having been, in this special instance, 
the result of the Divine command through the voice of 
J oshua. 

There are thus two distinct ways, at least, by which 
apparent vertical displacement, sufficient for the pheno- 
mena in question, can be caused by peculiar atmospheric 
conditions, provided the appearances are intended to 
continue for only a short period of time ; and in the 
work already referred to it is shewn that, by the opera- 
tion of Divine Power on another physical agent, — the 
luminiferous ether, — the setting of the sun and moon 
might have been to all appearance delayed even for 
" about whole day." 



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This is a particularly cheap and useful handbook, containing a mass 
of instruction concerning those things on which visitors to the metro- 
polis desire to be especially informed, the same being arranged in such a 
manner as to be easily referred to and made immediately available. In the 
present edition various imperfections which existed in last year's "Brown 
Book" have been amended, and several new features introduced. For 
instance, the information with regard to the subject of "lodgings" has been 
remodelled and rendered more serviceable than before, and lists of the 
"religious and artistic societies" of the metropolis have been added. Any 
stranger visiting London would do well to invest a shilling in the purchase 
of a copy of the "Brown Book" before setting out on a journey of discovery. 

CHURCHMAN. 

The bare enumeration of what is contained within those brown covers is a 
sufficient indication of its usefulness to the dweller in London or to visitors 
to the metropolis, — that is, to almost all the world. 

THE RUGBY ADVERTISER. 

The visitor to London could not possibly invest a shilling to better advan 
tage than in procuring this admirable little work ; indeed, the dweller in 
the metropolis, keen though he may be, will find on perusing its pages that 
there is a vast deal in the overgrown city of which he is not cognisant. 

BRIGHTON GAZETTE. 
This is a novel but very useful book of ready reference in all matters 
respecting the metropolis, concerning which "young men from the country,'' 
and, indeed, numbers of the inhabitants of "the modern Babylon" them- 
selves, are very often very much at fault. 

PUBLIC OPINION. 
The Messrs. Saunders, Otley, and Co. have issued "The Brown Bool? 
for 1865." Besides the very useful information which the first volume con 
tained, the present one has in addition Lists of the Religious and Artistic 
Societies, Guides to the Picture Collections of the Metropolis and the Me 
tropolitan Railway System. The same admirable arrangements are pre, 
served which rendered "The Brown Book for 1864" so valuable as an easj 
reference, and we are glad to see the projectors intend adding to the in\ 
formation year by year. 



I 5 

THE MORNING POST. 
This "Brown Book" is a novel attempt to furnish useful information 
which is not contained in the comprehensive mass of red books, guides, and 
directories. It is a spirited undertaking, and ought to be encouraged. The 
daily increase not only in the extent of London itself, but in the resort of 
strangers to the growing centre of the world's mighty interests, requires 
additional facilities of access, as well to the minor conveniences as to the 
higher amenities of confederate civilization. Such is the purpose of this 
intended half-yearly publication. Its compendious title-page enumerates 
the objects which it embraces ; and which it proposes to place within the 
reach of all who can bebenefitted by them. It is very complete in its list 
of public offices, police stations, postal arrangements, and cab stands, of 
scientific societies, their constitutions and times of meeting for the next 
half-year, of libraries and museums, of theatres and other places of amuse- 
ment, of hospitals aud charitable institutions. On these points its copious 
j statements may be serviceable alike to residents and visitors. But the 
department of hotels, lodging and boarding houses, and of breakfast and 
V dining rooms, is as yet very imperfect — a mere skeleton without integu- 
iments — an outline framework which has yet to be filled up. The proprie- 
tors of these establishments were unwilling to give the particulars asked of 
them ; they declined to advertise the rent of their rooms, or insert their 
names in a book of which the nature and object were unknown to them. 
[In this branch of their labours the compilers of this work aimed at too 
much ; the terms of lodgings are not fixable ; they fluctuate with seasons 
of arrival and departure ; they vary to permanent or casual inmates, to 
those who give trouble and to those who exact little attendance, to those 
• who have a pendant of children, and to others who give frequent parties. 
Nor can the features of each dwelling be noticed ; in many cases praise 
woidd be deceptive and truth libellous. For the purpose of ' ' The Brown 
Book" it would be quite sufficient to state the general character of a street 
or square in which there are many lodgings, and the natures of its vicinity, 
with the numbers of these houses and the names of their keepers. * It would 
, also be enough to say that in obscure localities the terms are low, in 
respectable situations moderate, but high in genteel and fashionable neigh- 
bourhoods. For a work constitued on this principle the editors would not 
fail to obtain all the information they want to satisfy the requirements of 
the public, and ensure an extensive patronage. 

THE SUN. 

Another ready reference book. Not a blue book. Not the Red Book. 
Not a livre jaune. Not party-coloured. But— a sensible, matter-of-fact, 
directly-to-the-purpose, plain, blunt, honest, sober Brown Book. A book 
to be published half-yearly— so that it will always convey the very latest 
information. A book that answers, among other frequently recurring 
questions, "Which is the nearest Post Office?" "How shall I find a 
Commissionaire?" "Whereabout is the nearest Telegraph Office?" A 
book so apropos that it ought to be placed so very handily for reference 
when required that the possessor should come at last to say of it as Charles 



* This suggestion has been acted upon in the present issue, and it is hoped successfully. 
It will be easily understood that this department of "The Brown Book " is not merely diffi- 
cult to carry out and of a most costly nature, but absolutely dependent on time and increas- 
ing confidence for its full development. With pains and patience, however, neither of 
which will be spared, the Editor hopes to make it with each successive issue more and 
more complete. 



6 

II said of Rochester—" Never in the way, and never out of the way ! " We 
don't know to whom it will prove the most acceptable— to the old Londoner, 
or to the young man from the country— to the true born Cockney, or to the 
unmistakeable°Foreiener. To every one who consults it, it will for a dead 
certainty prove most welcome, and all the more welcome because, we 
believe, perfectly reliable. 

NOTES AND QUERIES. 
A book containing the information detailed in this ample title-page cannot 
but be very useful, Tf the information be correct ; and we are bound to state 
that, as far as we have been able to test it, " The Brown Book" is as cor- 
rect,' and consequently as useful, as any of its Red and Blue contemporaries. 

THE NEWS. 

This handy little publication supplies a want which has long been felt not 
only by strangers, but also by Londoners themselves, for it contains in a 
well-arranged tabular form full information with respect to the situations 
and specialities of the different places of amusement, public and circulating 
libraries, hospitals, schools, and charitable institutions of London, as well as 
of a great many of the hotels, lodging and boarding-houses, breakfast and 
dining-rooms, &c. There is also what is called a "handy list," which shows 
the situations of the different post offices, money order offices, cab stands, 
police stations, fire engines, fire escapes, and also about one thousand of the 
principal streets of the Metropolis. We certainly wish Messrs. Saunders, 
Otley, and Co. every success in their undertaking, and from the great care 
which has evidently been bestowed upon the present number, and the cor- 
rectness of the information therein contained, we have no doubt whatever 
that the "Brown Book" will soon come to be looked upon as one of our 
most convenient and reliable metropolitan guide books. 

THE BUILDER. 

Under the title of "The Brown Book," Saunders, Otley, and Co. have 
issued the first half-yearly specimen of a guide intended to supply several 
wants : to show the nearest post office, telegraph office, fire engine, cab 
stand, and so forth, to any given street; list of lodgings, the various 
societies, theatres, &c. Why are the artistical exhibitions and societies 
left out?* 

THE READER. 

A good idea, and very well carried out. No country cousin should come hit rs 
up to the metropolis without first studying its lists of hotels and boarding 
and lodging-houses, in which, in all cases where they were not purposely 
withheld, the prices, of bed, board, lodging, &c, are added in a tabular for 
to the name and situation — the former being placed under the names the 
are known by, and the latter under the names of the streets in which the 
are located, in alphabetical order. The dinner list is on the same plan i 
that of the hotels; and, indeed, all the lists are as complete as one can hot 
to find them in a first attempt of the kind. There are lists of schools, 
tutors and governesses, of charities, of literary and scientific societies, anc 
of their meetings; of public libraries and of circulating libraries ; of museums, 
sights, theatres, with their plans, &c. ; of music halls, dancing rooms, &c. 
in each of which there is full and sufficient evidence of care and pains taken 
to make them reliable sources of information and reference. These are 



hey | 



* The information given on this head could not he obtained in time for the first issue. 

It has now been supplied. 



7 



supplemented by a "Handy List," which, in a tabular form, arranged in 
alphabetical order under the names of one thousand of the principal streets 
and thoroughfares of the metropolis, gives the whereabouts of post office 
receiving houses, pillar boxes, and money order offices ; of commissionaire 
stations, telegraph offices, cab stands, police stations, &c. ; so that a 
stranger may journey about town without the necessity of asking his way, 
or of making inquiries on other points, of anyone. " The Brown Book" 
should be in every counting house and on the hall-table of all well-to-do 
private residences. 

THE MORNING HERALD. 

This is an excellent idea well worked out. Strangers in London, and even 
residents in a different quarter of the modern Babylon and western Pekin, 
are continually at a loss for information about places and things. Tell them 
to meet you at such and such an hotel, and the first thing occurring to 
them is to ask or find out in what street is the hotel in question, and 
whereabouts is the street itself. Advise them to go to a particular place of 
amusement, and they often feel that their only chance of finding it is to give 
themselves over to a cabman. Let the dweller in the country or at Clapham 
have occasion to be at St. John's-wood, and there to seek a post or telegraph 
office and he becomes bewildered. It is the object of ; ' The Brown Book ; ' 
to put him at his ease on these matters ; to tell him everything he can want 
to know about post and telegraph offices, commissionaire, fire engine and 
escape stations, hospitals, cab stands, police stations, boarding houses, 
hotels and lodging houses, dining rooms, schools, public charities, literary 
and scientific societies, public and circulating libraries, museums, theatres, 
music halls, and many other things. The first edition is naturally far from 
perfect, for it would have been impossible to make everybody who could 
supply the required information acquainted with the object' and projected 
existence of such a work. Still the compilers have done wonders. All the 
information at all accessible in print has been carefully condensed, tabulated, 
and corrected. But the lists of hotels, for instance, has been, partly by the 
want of enterprise in the landlords or managers, rendered less complete as 
well in name as in detail of prices than it was intended to, and than it will 
doubtless ultimately be. Nevertheless, he must be very hard to please who 
cannot from the present list suit himself with an hotel accommodated to his 
means. The same remarks will apply to the lodging and boarding house 
lists. The dinner list— one most interesting to both country cousin and 
town resident— is sufficiently full for all purposes. The lists of schools and 
tutors and governesses, with their several specialities and terms, will save 
many persons a great deal of useless and frequently very unpleasant inquiry. 
The particulars of the charities and the scientific societies, especially the 
table showing the days of the meetings of the latter bodies, will be most 
useful ; and the brief summaries of the features of the museums will prove 
valuable to nearly every class of visitors. The tabulated list of theatres and 
places of amusement is most complete. It gives the general style of the 
plays and sights for which each house is noted, the hour of commencement, 
the prices, and some miscellaneous remarks— such as the necessity of 
evening dress here and there, the name of the play for which the theatre has 
been lately celebrated, &c. Finally, there is a very clear index, reference 
to which will show at once the page on which the required information is 
conveyed. ^ ^BT. 

This book will be found a useful book of reference m every commercial 
office. 



SOCIETY OF ARTS. 
This is intended as a book of ready reference to the hotels of London, 
with full information as to situation, speciality, &c. It also includes a notice 
of the literary and scientific societies, with lists of their meetings for the 
present session ; particulars and (in some instances) plans of the theatres 
and other places of amusement, and an account of the various sights of the 
metropolis. 

THE STANDARD. 
It will be very strange if the present edition of "The Brown Book," 
imperfect as it avowedly is, should not in some measure repay Messrs. 
Saunders, Otley, and Co. for their enterprise in bringing out ; and it will be 
stranger still if in its future half yearly editions it does not practically 
exclude all other guide books to the metropolis, for it is only half a crown,*' 
and the use of it ought to save its price to the country cousin in a day, and 
to the average town resident in a week. 

THE WEEKLY REVIEW. 
Generally speaking, the name of a book is an indication of its contents, 
but not so in the present case. Why the compiler has chosen such a name 
remains a secret — only so far as conjecture can furnish, we imagine that 
there are numerous books of this kind, and therefore all suitable names 
have been consumed. The object of the book will be best shown by qiioting 
the following from the Introduction : " ' The Brown Book ' is intended to 
supply several wants which have not hitherto been provided for by any of 
the numerous Introductions, Guides, and Handy-Books of London. Few 
words are required to bring home to every one the wants which every one 
has felt. In consequence of its vast extent, most quarters of the metropolis 
are as unknown to the resident in any one of them as they are to a 
total stranger. Both residents and strangers are continually puzzled by 
such questions as the following : ' Which is the nearest post office ?' ' How 
shall I find a commissionaire ?' 4 Where is the nearest telegraph office ?' 
It has not before now been attempted to give such information in an accept- 
able form. It is believed that the plan adopted in ' The Brown Book ' of 
giving in a tabular form numerical references to numbered and alphabetical 
lists of the receiving houses and pillar boxes, money order offices, commis- 
sionaire stations, police stations, cab stands, telegraph stations, fire engines, 
fire escapes, and hospitals of the metropolis will be found simple and 
effective. Such a table, containing upwards of a thousand of the principal 
streets, will be found in our Handy List." Such is the information, with a 
few other items, this book supplies. It will be found very handy to all 
parties requiring such knowledge ; and who does not ? The price is 2s. Gd.* 

THE CITY PRESS. 
Every new publication is professedly started to supply "a want that has 
long been felt," &c. As a rule, addresses in first numbers are no more to 
be believed than are epitaphs. An exception, however, must really be made 
in the case _ of " The Brown Book," which is intended to supply several 
wants not hitherto provided for by any of the numerous Guides and Hand- 
books of London. In an ingeniously yet simply arranged table are given 
the nearest receiving house, pillar box, money order office, commissionaire 
station, telegraph, fire engine and fire escape stations, hospital, cab stand, 
and police station, to more than one thousand of the principal streets. 



* Now One Shilling only. 







There are also lists of hoarding and lodging-houses, hotels, dining-rooms, 
schools, charities, literary and scientific societies, with their officers, 
museums, theatres, music halls, and other places of entertainment, with 
their style of amusement, hour of commencement, prices, &c. The work 
has been produced in a neat and portable form, and should be in the 
counting-house of every business and mercantile establishment, the public 
room of every hotel, and on the table of every family. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCHMAN. 

This work is intended as a supplement to the various guides and hand- 
books of London. It is, as its title-page tells us, a book of ready reference 
to the hotels, lodging houses, breakfast and dining rooms, libraries, amuse- 
ments, charitable institutions, societies, &c. of London. The chief feature 
in it is a handy list, containing an alphabetical list of a thousand principal 
streets of the metropolis, which shows the nearest post office, pillar box, 
commissionaire, cab stand, police station, &c. The plan is a very useful 
one. On some points the information is meagre, owing to the refusal of 
parties to give the needful particulars, but we are assured that in future 
editions there is every expectation that the work will be more complete and 
comprehensive. 

v THE LA W TIMES. ' 

The difficulty which not only strangers to the metropolis, but also resi- 
dents, feel when they are in search of any of the above institutions lying 
out of the regular track, will at once recommend this book to their notice. 
The author candidly admits that many of the lists are not so perfect as 
could be wished. For instance, the lists of the parcels offices, he tells us', 
are not complete, owing to objections on the part of the Parcels Company. 
This seems the most unaccountable. "We should have imagined that they 
would only have been too glad to have taken this means of publishing their 
whereabouts. The objections of hotel keepers we can better understand. 
As a whole, we think this book one of the most useful that has been 
introduced to our notice for a long time. Its small price places its purchase 
within the means of most people. 

THE WESLEYAN TIMES. 

"The Brown Book" is the somewhat inexpressive title of a new serial, the 
first issue of which Messrs. Saunders, Otley, and Co. have just sent out. 
Its design is excellent and most useful. It is intended ^to be the guide and 
companion to both strangers and natives in this overgrown metropolis. 
There are tens of thousands who do not know where to find the nearest 
post office, or cab stand, or police station, or fire escape, or hospital. These 
pages supply ample and correct information on the subjects named, and 
also on boarding and lodging-houses, diningrooms, schools, charities, 
learned and literary societies, libraries and museums, amusements, &c, 
with a full in dex. Th e great public utility of the work will be manifest to every 
one ; but it requires further extension to complete the plan of the book. 

THE ILLUSTRATED TIMES. 

This is another of the many guides to London which are sometimes so 
useful to provincial Englishmen, and always so bewildering to foreigners. 
Much of its contents may be easily guessed, such as places of public amuse- 
ments and learned societies. The chief features of novelty are lists and 



10 



criticisms of hotels, so far as has been found practicable ; lists of lodging- 
houses, breakfast and dining-rooms; libraries, "public and circulating; 
and all kinds of public buildings, schools, charities, &c. The great novelty 
is a list, on the "cab fare " principle of tabulation, of the nearest receiving 
house pillar box, money order office, commissionaire, telegraph station, fire 
engine, fire escape, hospital, cab stand, and police station, the "nearest" 
being given in columns by the side of a list of names of the principal 
streets. "The Brown Book" is worth looking at before the purchaser of a 
guide book makes up his mind. 

THE COURT JOURNAL. 

This useful volume contains a list of hotels, lodging and boarding-houses, 
dining-rooms, public and circulating libraries, amusements, &c. It is a 
miniature directory, in fact, and no stranger coming to London should be 
without so important a key to it. 

THE MA R YLEB ONE MERCURY. 

A handy book of reference, useful to every one. It supplies a want long 
felt and cannot fail to be successful. 

THE CLERK EN WELL NEWS. 

"The Brown Book." Under this very curious title Messrs. Saunders, 
Otley, and Co. issue, one of the most useful books that it is possible to have for 
half-a-crown.* It commences by giving a thousand of the principal streets 
in the metropolis, and to each of these references is given to the nearest 
post office, money order office, cab stand, police, fire engine, and fire escape 
stations, hospitals, and such like handy information of which Londoners 
stand very greatly in need. The country cousin will find "The Brown Book" 
worth his speculative half-a-crown, for it is a book of ready reference to the 
hotels, lodging and boarding-houses, breakfast and dining rooms of the me- 
tropolis, with the list of prices of those establishments, which show they 
mean to do well by the traveller, by making known their minimum and 
maximum charges. All the public and circulating libraries, amusements, 
schools, charitable institutions, hospitals, with all their specialities, are set 
forth in full, and all the particulars respecting the learned societies— as offi- 
ces, objects, places and times of meeting, subscriptions and mode of entering, 
are given for the benefit of those who may need this information, which they 
will find, if they try, is very hard to be acquired without the aid of "The 
Brown Book." The volume will take rank at once as a book which all who 
are about town should be acquainted with. 

THE CLERKENWELL DIAL. 
The Red book, the Blue book, and the Post-office Directory have not 
been found sufficient to supply the daily thirst of the public for information, 
so here they have the "Brown Book" to supplement the others. Strangers 
in any locality of London will find here readily the nearest place to post a 
letter ; or to obtain a money order and get cash for one ; or the nearest 
commissionaire or telegraph for sending a message by either ; or how most 
quickly to get a cab to convey them to the theatre or other place of amuse- 
ment. It gives full particulars about all places of entertainment, the 
nature of amusement to be expected, when the doors open, and the 
various prices of admission. Then there are lists of hotels, coffee houses, 
dining rooms, &c. , with the tariff of charges where the editor of the work 



Now One Shilling only. 



11 



has been able to obtain them, but the information under this head is very 
meagre, owing to the petty jealousies of proprietors. "The Brown Book" 
contains abundance of other information on matters about which questions 
are daily asked, but which cannot be satisfactoiily answered without refer- 
ence to bulky volumes, and very often not there. For the next issue we 
would suggest another useful head — the routes of the metropolitan omni- 

THE SPORTING GAZETTE. 

This neat little volume professes to give in a small compass a variety of 
information not to be found elsewhere, with much that might be gathered 
from Directories, and some details obtainable only by visiting the institu- 
tions it treats of. The complete table of the days of meeting, and of the 
objects promoted by every scientific society, will be found exceedingly 
useful. An original feature hi "The Brown Book" is the so called "Handy 
List," intended to direct strangers to the nearest cab stand, letter box, and 
telegraph station, while timid visitors can forearm themselves against catas- 
trophes by conning the bearings of the nearest fire escape, hospital, and 
police station under its pilotage. The list of hotels and places of refresh- 
ment is very incomplete, owing, as we are told, to the reluctance of the 
landlords to furnish any information ; this defect, however, will be remedied. 
In the meantime, if this attempt to describe all establishments which 
minister to the intellectual or social comfort of Londoners were well 
supported by those who can best aid the publishers, the yearly ' 1 Brown 
Book" might command information of a special value, not clashing with its 
namesake in Blue or Red, from which its own title sufficiently distinguishes it. 

THE CHELTENHAM JOURNAL. 

This book is intended to supply a number of wants experienced not only 
by visitors to the metropolis, but by residents likewise, who are often at a 
loss to ascertain the locale of the many institutions with which London 
abounds, or to discover at a moment's warning the whereabouts of the 
various police stations, cab stands, post offices, fire engines, hotels, dining- 
rooms, libraries, and places of public amusement. This information is here 
afforded in a series of lists and tables, so arranged as to be clearly under- 
stood and readily referred to. The first, which is denominated a "handy 
list," contains the names of upwards of a thousand of the principal streets, 
alphabetically arranged, with a tabulated forest of figures disposed in 
columns, which form an index to ten other lists which give the situations of 
all the receiving houses, pillar letter boxes, money order offices, commis- 
sionaires, telegraph stations, fire engines, fire escapes, hospitals, cab stands, 
and police stations. These are followed by lists of boarding-houses, hotels, 
lodging houses, and dining rooms, giving their titles and situation, the 
names of their proprietors, and, as far as possible, the prices charged at 
each establishment. These lists are, however, far from complete, owing to 
the disinclination of the proprietors of hotels to supply the necessary parti- 
culars. Then there is a list of schools, and another of tutors and 
governesses, both of which appear to be capable of considerable extension. 
In another section of the book we find an alphabetical list of the most 
important charities ; and, further on, a comprehensive and descriptive cata- 
logue of scientific and literary societies, museums, public and circulating 
libraries, sights, and places of public amusement, the information under the 
last mentioned head embracing the name of the house, the style of amuse- 
ment, the hour of commencement, and the prices of admission. The design 
of the publication is good, but there are some portions of it which are 



12 



susceptible of improvement. For instance, in connection with the " hotels" 
and "dining rooms" there appears to be an attempt to go into particulars 
which would not only be superflous, but tend to excite suspicion as to the 
impartiality of the compilers. It appears from the preface that it was 
intended to add ' ' a report upon each hotel, the result of a special visit* 
made to it," but the intention has been reduced to practice in two or three 
cases only, and we think it would have been better had it been altogether 
abandoned. Again, with regard to ' ' amusements, " only the bare facts 
should be given, and the remarks which are appended thereto eliminated in 
future editions.* 

THE GATESHEAD OBSERVER. 

A most useful and welcome edition to the Guide, and otherwise instruc- 
tive works in connection with London, has just been issued by Messrs. 
Saunders, Otley, and Co., under the title of "The Brown Book." So large 
an amount of information (and much of it quite new) must be extremely 
valuable to, and, we trust, will be extensively patronised by the multitudes 
who throng London, and who are not mrfrequently, for want of a good guide, 
as helpless as if they were in the Arabian desert. 

R UGB Y AD VERTISER. 
This ' ' Brown Book is one which has been long needed, and appears to 
be the very thing required. It is a comprehensive guide to the great 
metropolis of London : going more minutely into details than the usual 
Introductions, Guides, and Hand Books with which one is so often disap- 
pointed. "The Brown Book" contains the very fullest information 
respecting the London hotels, lodging and boarding houses, breakfast and 
dining rooms, public and circulating libraries, places of amusement, chari- 
ties, the scientific societies, plans of the theatres, compendium of sights, 
and in fact every possible thing that a stranger or any person not well 
acquainted with London may want to know. Another excellent feature in 
the "Brown Book" is— a handy list of street pjost offices, cab stands, 
police stations, fire engines and escapes, hospitals and dispensaries, telegraph 
and commissionaire stations : giving at a glance the nearest of each to any 
street in which you may happen to be — a very excellent idea well worked 
out. And all this information for half -a crown !f As yet it is, of course, 
only an experiment, and — we can well understand — a costly one. It rests 
with the public to determine whether it shall become a success. 

THE CARLISLE PATRIOT. 
"The Brown Book" is a cheap book of ready reference to the hotels, 
lodging and boarding houses, breakfast and dining rooms, giving terms, 
prices, and bills of fare, every kind of place of entertainment and amuse- 
ment, hospitals, schools, libraries, charitable institutions, with the fullest 
information on all points. It contains also a handy list showing the nearest 
post office, cab stand, police station, fire engine, fire escape, in one thousand 
of the principal streets in London. This book should be in the hands not 
only of every business man in the metropolis and lounger about town, but 
every traveller from the country, to whom it will afford valuable information. 

* It will be seen that the greater part of these suggestions are about to be adopted. The 
remarks, however, as to the nature, &c, of the different amusements are found to be 
generally esteemed a great service to country visitors. Upon their strict impartiality 
will of course depend in a great measure the reputation of the book, and of this both 
Editor and Publishers are fully aware. In the present edition this part of the work is very 
greatly extended. 

t Now One Sh illing only. 



13 



THE STOCKPORT AND CHESHIRE COUNTY NEWS. 

Under the above original title we have one of the best guide-books to the 
Metropolis extant. It is, in fact, a complete book photograph of the principal 
places of business or amusement in London, and gives valuable information 
upon everything likely to be necessary to the strange visitor to that modern 
Babylon. Some idea of the extraordinary comprehensiveness of the book 
may be formed when we state that its contents embrace a list of one 
thousand of the principal streets, arranged in tables with numeral columns 
of reference, shewing the nearest receiving house, money-order office, 
telegraph station, fire-engine and escape house, hospital, cab-stand, and 
police-station to each. Nor does the work simply give a dry detail of names 
in each of these instances. Under every head will be found pointed and 
pithy remarks upon the various institutions, affording an amount of valuable 
information not to be found elsewhere in so small a compass. No visitor to 
London should be without this little work, which is calculated to render the 
greatest stranger perfectly at home even in the heart of the "big city." We 
advise all persons who wish without trouble to penetrate the 4 ' mysteries of 
London " to possess themselves of the work. 

THE WESTERN TIMES. 

A new work of great value to those who have occasion to frequent the 
metropolis, either for the purposes of business or pleasure. It contains a 
reference to the hotels, lodging and boarding-houses, breakfast and dining- 
rooms, libraries (public and circulating), amusements, hospitals, schools, 
and charitable institutions of London. With such a programme, "The 
Brown Book," if properly conducted, could not fail to be of great service. 
For the first half-yearly number, the information is, of course, not so full in 
every respect as might be desired. The publishers complain that the novelty 
of their scheme has for a short time retarded the completeness of their 
success, but no one who glances at the book can for a moment designate it 
as a failure. The hotels, boarding-houses, lodging-houses, and dining- 
rooms, are chiefly the departments where a good deal more information is 
absolutely necessary ; but the particulars of the scientific and literary 
societies, the museums and charities, are not only full, but admirably 
arranged. The amusements and sights, for which the metropolis is so 
famous, and which form its chief attraction to Young England, are classified 
for easy reference ; and brief, but comprehensive instructions are given for 
the guidance of the sight-seer. The work will certainly become a standard 
one for purposes of reference. 

THE BRIGHTON GAZETTE. 
This is a guide-book, very useful to residents in and visitors to the metro- 
polis, containing, in an ingenious tabular form, most complete information 
in reference to hotels, lodgings, dining-rooms, institutions, amusements, 
postal arrangements, cab-stands, and, in short, precisely that sort of infor- 
mation that every stranger in London feels the need of. 

THE STOCKPORT ADVERTISER. 

We have our black book of pensions and blue book of reports ; and now 
we have "The Brown Book" of London, which will be a valuable medium 
of ready reference. Great pains appears to have been bestowed in its pre- 
paration. 



14 



THE COVENTRY HERALD. 

This is a most useful publication, supplying several wants felt by the 
visitor and resident in the metropolis, which have not hitherto been pro- 
vided for by any of the guides or handy-books of London. 

THE BLACKBURN STANDARD. 

This handy list will be found to answer fully the purpose for which it was 
intended, aud prove a valuable acquisition not only to those residing in 
London, bnt to all whom business or pleasure may draw occasionally to the 
great metropolis. The information it contains is of a comprehensive nature, 
and such as is not to be found in any of the numerous guides and handy- 
books of London. The efforts made by the compilers to render the book one 
of easy and handy reference deserve to be crowned with success. 

THE WITNESS. 

This is a book of ready reference for the world of London, and a work 
which no one unacquainted with and intending to visit the great metropolis, 
should be without. It will save its possessor twice its value. 

BRADFORD OBSERVER. 

This portable, neatly-printed volume purposes to be ' 1 a book of ready 
reference to the hotels, &c, of London ; with full information as to situation, 
speciality, &c." With all this information, its value to persons whose 
business calls them to the metropolis need not be poiuted out. 

NOTTINGHAM REVIEW. 

Under this title (derived from the colour of its covers) the above pub- 
lishers have issued a very serviceable handbook of London. We fancy that 
few visiting London, or freshly settling in it, would regret the expenditure 
of the price, but, on the contrary, would recover it many times in the valu- 
able information given. 

CAMBRIDGE CHRONICLE. 

This a rather a strange name for a book to have, though that in itself is 
no reason at all why the book should not be a good one. The number of 
guide-books to London and its suburbs is almost infinite, and the publication 
before us aims at supplying a want which they have all neglected. The 
work is one to suit people in an emergency. We draw attention to the 
publication, as we think it one which may be of great use not only to 
strangers to the metropolis, but also to dwellers in the metropolis itself in 
cases when they have pressing need to seek any of the establishments 
enumerated. 

POOLE AND SOUTH-WESTERN HERALD. 
This useful handbook forms an excellent guide to London. Considerable 
space is devoted to information respecting the various public institutions 
and places of amusement, so that whether one may visit London on business 
or for pleasure this book will form an invaluable companion. Neither 
trouble nor expense has evidently been spared in its compilation. 

WAR WICK A D VER TISER. 

A book of ready reference on the multitudinous points of business con- 
nected with London and its teeming population. 



15 



BERKSHIRE CHRONICLE. 
This is an extremely useful book. It gives a variety of information on 
those points on which information is most needed by those who occasionally 
visit— and who does not ?— the metropolis. As a trustworthy guide we can 
recommend "The Brown Book" to the attention of our readers. 

NEWCASTLE DAILY JOURNAL. 
By the timely publication of "The Brown Book," Messrs. Saunders* 
Otley, and Co. have supplied a desideratum, the want of which has fre- 
quently been felt, not only by strangers, but also by those residing in 
London. Who that has visited the vast metropolis has not sometimes been 
perplexed to find the nearest post-office, commissionaire, or telegraph office ? 
Any one possessing a copy of "The Brown Book " will experience no diffi- 
culty in such matters, as, on referring to the work under notice, all such 
information will be found, in a well-arranged and easily-understood tabular 
form, giving numerical references to numbered and alphabetical lists of the 
principal j>ublic offices and institutions of London. With one exception, 
we consider "The Brown Book" the best and most useful work of the kind 
ever published; but as the work will be revised and corrected half-yearly, 
the omission can be supplied. We refer to the absence of a well-arranged 
map or plan, which would enhance the value of the book very materially. 

TUNBRIDCE WELLS GAZETTE. 
This publication " is intended to supply several wants which have not 
hitherto been provided for by any of the numerous introductions, guides, 
and handbooks of London." With this object before them, the publishers 
set out upon the work of compilation with the most comprehensive plans 
we have yet seen projected ; and, although they have not succeeded even to 
the extent of their own anticipations, they have put into the hands of 
London residents and visitors a mass of information derivable from no other 
single source. Their partial failure to furnish every particular of public 
interest or import connected with the metropolis, results, not from any want 
of exertion on their part, but from a dislike in some parties to the publi- 
cation of what they consider private business. In spite of this, however, 
we have, within the 150 pages of closely-printed and tabulated matter before 
us, more varied and useful information than one could well have hoped to 
obtain. The publishers having thrown much spirit into their new venture, 
avow it to be only a costly experiment, leaving it to the public to say 
whether or not it shall become a success. We cannot, of ourselves, make 
it so, but we do say, that if it receives only a tithe of the support it deserves, 
the success will be as complete as the publishers could wish. 

THE DUBLIN EVENING POST. 
A work possessing such a mass of information as this should be in the 
hands of every one who intends to visit London. The price is only half-a- 
crown.* Great care appears to have been bestowed on its preparation. 

CO VENTR Y HERALD. 
This is the second year's issue of "The Brown Book," which contains 
an extraordinary amount of information respecting the entire menage of 
the great metropolis. 



* Now One Shilling only. 



DISPATCH. 

Once more this exceedingly good and useful work makes its appearance, 
and whilst its general form remains the same, several additions have been 
made to its contents, thus increasing its completeness. For instance, lists 
of the religious and artistic societies are now given, as well as guides to the 
picture collections of the metropolis. The Metropolitan Kailway system is 
also noticed. The information respecting lodgings has been rewritten, and, 
indeed, every care has been taken to make the work serviceable alike to 
residents in town and visitors from the country. 

LOXDOX REVIEW. 

This handy shilling pamphlet is a guide to the London hotels, lodging and 
boarding-houses, breakfast and dining-rooms, metropolitan railways, public 
and circulating libraries, amusements, picture galleries, hospitals, schools, 
charitable institutions, and religious, learned, and artistic societies ; to 
which is added a list shewing the nearest post-office, money-order office, 
cab-stand, police, telegraph, and commissionaire station, fire-engine and 
escape, hospital, &c. , to upwards of one thousand of the principal streets of 
the metropolis. The work is clearly printed, and contains a large body of 
facts in a small compass. 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY BOTVDEN AND BRA"\VN, 13, PRINCES STREET, LITTLE QCEEN STREET, W.C. 



66, Brook Street, London, W. 
December, 1864. 




Messrs. Saunders y Otley^ & CoJs 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS AND 



NEW EDITIONS, 



In 1 vol. post 8vo, 5s. 

The Davenport Brothers : 

A BIOGRAPHY OF IRA ERASTUS DAVENPORT AND 
WILLIAM HENRY DAVENPORT, commonly known 
as the "BROTHERS DAVENPORT." 
With an Account of Eleven Years of Preternatural Pheno- 
mena and Extraordinary Physical and Psychical 
Manifestations. 
By T. L. NICHOLS, M.D., 
Author of " Forty Years in America," &c. [Ready. 



In 1 vol. small 8vo. 

Life's Paths. 

A TALE OF OUR OWN DAY. 
By the Author of "Gentle Influence," "Amy's Trials," &c. 

With Frontispiece, [Just Ready, 



In 1 vol. post 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

Tales at the Outspan ; 

Or, Adventures in the Wild Regions of Southern Africa. 
By CAPTAIN A. W. DRAYSON, 
Author of " Sporting Scenes in South Africa, &c. 
New and Cheaper Edition, 
Illustrated with numerous Woodcuts. [Ready. 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

M a c a r i a. 

A NOVEL. 

By AUGUSTA J. EVANS, 
Author of " Beulah," &c. [Ready 



In 1 vol. post 8vo, bevelled edges, 6s. 

Arno's Waters ; 

AND OTHER POEMS. 
By FRANCES JANE FORSAYTH. [Ready. 



In 2 vols, post 8vo. 

Uncle Angus. 

A NOVEL, 
By MARY S. G. NICHOLS. 
Author of " Uncle John," "Agnes Morris," &c. [Ready. 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

The Little House by the Railway Arch. 

A NOVEL. 

By CHARLES FELIX, 
Author of "Velvet Lawn," &c. [In preparation. 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

Percy Talbot. 

A NOVEL. 

By GEORGE GRAHAM, 
Author of " Carstone Rectory," &c 



[Ready 



3 



THE « A L A B A M A." 

Now ready, in 2 vols, post 8vo, Second Edition, 24s. 

The Cruise of the "Alabama" and 
the "Sumter." 

From the PRIVATE JOURNALS, &c, of CAPTAIN SEMMES 
C.S.N., AND OTHER OFFICERS. 
With ILLUSTRATIONS, CORRESPONDENCE, &c. 
Second Edition. 



"They are useful less for the novelty of 
the information which they convey than 
for authenticating, summarizing, and me- 
thodizing numerous little histories that 
have long since been notorious." — Times. 

"The conduct and courage of Captain 
Bemmes in action were worthy of his cause 
and of his reputation, but the qualities by 
which he will be hereafter memorable will 
rather be the judgment with which he exe- 
cuted his plans. Whether that peace for 
which Captain Semmes sighed during the 
lonely hours of his cruise comes soon or 
late, this at least is certain, that the flag 
under which the ' 'Alabama" cruised has con- 
tributed a memorable episode, to the naval 
history of the world. "Saturday Review. 

"A simple, straightforward, and most 
interesting narrative of a successful enter- 
prise, which must always hold a prominent 
place in the annals of naval warfare." — 
Press. 

"Captain Semmes' Journals will do 
much not only to keep alive the fame of 
the Alabama in our national records, but 
to enable English men to appreciate the 
character of her daring commander as a 



true gentleman and patriot, as well as a 
skilful and dashing sailor. The tale of the 
gallant " Alabama " will not easily be for- 
gotten in the memory of Englishmen." — 
John Bull. 

"We regard the volumes before us, 
authentic as they may be deemed in the 
source, as a very useful record of a very 
memorable episode in naval warfare." — 
Globe. 

"An authentic account of the career of 
Captain Semmes— at least so far as it has 
been connected with the "Alabama" and 
"Sumter," — compiled from his private 
journals and other papers, cannot fail to 
be read with interest both by friend and 
foe." — Dispatch. 

" The name of Captain Semmes has gone 
forth into all lands wherever printed news 
can penetrate or the trumpet-tongue of 
fame is heard. Henceforth the name of 
Semmes is historic, and " 290 " is a charmed 
number." — Illustrated London News. 

" These volumes Avill be read with great 
interest. Written in a frank, manly, un- 
affected style."— London Review. 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

Marion. 

A NOVEL. By the late "MANHATTAN." [Ready. 



"Manhattan's novel will be read because 
of the author's name. It is a pity that such 
a novel cannot be abridged or read by 
deputy. It is only a very faint idea of the 
life which is displayed in it that can be 
obtained from a partial reading of it." — 
Times. 

" There is not the smallest sign of book- 
making apparent in all the pages, which 
contain material enough for half-a-dozen 
ordinary works of Action, in which the 



usual elaboration would be brought to 
bear. " — Reader. 

" The personages in "Marion" are sup- 
posed to circulate among, and to form part 
of the best New York society of the day. 
They are units in what we have been ac- 
customed to hear described as the Upper 
Ten Thousand."— Saturday Review. 

' ' Marion is a romance of no common 
order of excellence. No one who takes up 
the book will, if he can help it, put it down 
unfinished, " — Eerald. 



In post 8vo. 

My Sister's Son, 

A NOVEL. 
By W. J. SORRELL, 
Author of "Christmas Day," "The Caricature," &c. 

[In preparation. 



4 



In 1 vol. 8vo. 18s. 

The History of the Cotton Famine, 

FROM THE FALL OF SUMTER TO THE PASSING OF 
THE PUBLIC WORKS ACT. 
By R. ARTHUR ARNOLD. [Ready. 

"Mr. Arnold's 600 pages are filled with j 



facts and figures arranged in a lucid popu 
lar stvle, and from the great and perma- 
nent importance of the subject will be read 
with interest." — Times. 

" The story of the cotton famine, as told 
by Mr. Arnold, has all the interest of a 
romance ; the statistics, the figures, the 
reports of Mr. Farnall, the weekly returns 
of the Board of Guardians, are all so many 
threads of interest in the story. The book 
is well put together, carefully, and with a 
fairness and candour which entitle the 
author to high praise." — Athcncmm. 

" It traces in a clear and succinct man- 
ner the steps which were taken to meet a 
national calamity, as soon as the prospects 
of the cotton supply became darkened."— 
Observer. 

" Mr. Arnold has put together all the 
facts with lucid minuteness, and enabled 



his readers to recall all the details of a 
struggle which reflected honour on Bri- 
tish administration." — Spectator. 

" "We acknowledge the substantial merits 
of Mr. Arnold's work. He discusses with 
fairness, with temper, and we think with 
substantial justice, the various question 
which arose and became matter of contro- 
versy during the famine. " — London Review. 

"We congratulate Mr. Arnold on his 
having added a very valuable contribution 
to contemporary history. He has evi- 
dently bestowed very considerable pains 
in the collection of his facts, and arranged 
them in lucid order. His narrative has 
the merit of fidelity and of being free from 
partiality. It is complete in statement, 
and will always remain a standard book of 
reference witli regard to the highly inte- 
resting events which it records."— Herald. 



In 1 vol. post 8vo, Second Edition, 6s. 

The Danes in Camp : 

LETTERS FROM SONDERBORG. 
By the Honourable AUBERON HERBERT. [Ready. 



u This is a pleasantly written book, be- 
cause it is exactly what it professes to be. 
Mr. Herbert's book is satisfactory to read, 
because it presents so strange a contrast 
to the average of the literary class to which 
he belongs. Its merit is that it is written 
because its author wishes to tell what he 
has seen and felt, and not because he 
wishes to produce an article that will selL 
There are many lively and striking pas- 
sages." — Saturday Review. 

"The letters are well and gracefully 
written ; they teem with interesting inci- 
dents and narrations ; there is about them 
an air of probity, which instantly im- 
presses the reader with the conviction 
that they contain only the truth ; and all 
this is mingled with a good humour and 
moderation that win our confidence and 
deserve our respect. "—Daily News. 

"Mr. Herbert is an agreeable, manly 
writer, and English readers will respond 
gratefully to the generous sympathy and 
admiration which he expresses for the 
inhabitants of the little kingdom." — 
Athenaum. 



These interesting letters are dedicated 
to the writer's mother, the Countess Dow- 
ager of Carnarvon. They place the events 
of the siege graphically before the reader, 
in simple but forcible language. All that 
Mr. Herbert says claims our most careful 
attention. " — Reader. 

' ' The story in his pages is an interesting 
one." — Spectator, first notice. 

"The writer has many good qualities 
for his task. He writes easily and plea- 
santly, he is never prolix, he is not pe- 
dantic, and he is not facetious. The pic- 
tures are vivid, and the sentiments come 
fresh from their being unmixed with fur- 
ther matter. " — Spectator, second notice. 

" The book is in all respects charming. 
It is, moreover, a remarkably successful 
deout in literature. Indeed, it is the best 
book of the kind we ever met with. In 
every page we feel the presence of a gal- 
lant, meditative, and highly attractive na- 
ture. The book seems the prelude of a 
brilliant career." — Press. 



In 1 vol. post 8vo. 2s. 

Conyers Lea, 

Or SKETCHES OF CHARACTER, MILITARY, MAGISTE- 
RIAL, AND EPISCOPAL. 
By CYRIL THORNTON, M.A. 

Cheap Edition, [Ready. 



5 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

Velvet Lawn. 

A NOVEL. 

By CHARLES FELIX, Author of "The Notting Hill Mystery." 

[Ready. 

"Strong and pervading interest there 
unquestionably is in the story."— Observer. 

"A straightforward and workmanlike 
story, fairly interesting throughout. Mr. 
Felix is evidently a man of ability."— 
Reader. 

"Such as admire an elaborately con- 
trived plot, detailed in a fluent and easy 
style, will derive much pleasure from the 
perusal of the tale." — Dispatch. 

" In character as well as incident, "Vel- 
vet Lawn " is singularly rich, and it will 
unquestionably be a very popular novel." 
Press. 



"The plot appears to us to be original, 
and is certainly remarkable for its inge- 
nuity. " — A thenceum. 

" The plot of ' Velvet Lawn ' is exceed- 
ingly well conceived, and the interest never 
flags. " — Index. 

"It will find many readers, having at- 
tractions for the more thoughtful as well 
as the mere devourers of sensationalism." 
— Herald. 

" There is a story, and that story is well 
told, so that it will command many 
readers." — Globe. 

" It rises far above the ordinary run of 
novels."— Daily News. 



In 3 vols, post 8vo. 

Rington Priory. 

A NOVEL. By ETHEL HONE. 



" The moral is unobjectionable." — Athe- 

"A very excellent novel of its class. 
Written with a natural force which sug- 
gests very little effort, it is free from affec- 
tation or strained effects. Novel readers 
will certainly thank Ethel Hone for this 
effort in their behalf." — Reader. 

"Reminds us of 'Emma', and 'Sense 
and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' 
and the rest of that mildly brilliant con- 
stellation. ' Rington Priory ' describes 
English people of various ranks in a coun- 
try neighbourhood, and describes them 
beH."— Globe. 



[Ready. 

"'Rington Priory' is an interesting 
. story, with an fair of truthfulness. The 
authoress is felicitous in her description 
of the village of Rington, with its various 
sets and cliques, its 'dissenting interest,' 
its trivial quarrels, and jealousies. The 
book is pleasantly written."— Press. 

" The incidents, conversations, and plot 
are eminently natural and interesting ; 
and the entire tone of the novel so perfectly 
healthy, that we consider it a positive relief 
from the morbid works with which the 
modern press so almost uniformly teems." 
—SJar. 



In 2 vols, post 8vo. 

Mr. Christopher Katydid (of Casconia). 

A TALE. 

[Ready. 

" There are some pleasant descriptions 
of country scenery, and the story is very 
amusing." — Star. 

" Reveals to us some new and curious 
habits of life."— Daily News. 

" The work has merits, and is not unde- 
serving of perusal. It is a thoroughly 
trans-Atlantic tale, and the heroes and 
heroines whom it describes are refreshingly 
different from those of our native romance.' 
London Review. 



Edited by MARK HEYWOOD. 

There are marks of cleverness in this 
evidence of ability." 



tale. The author giv 
■ — Athenaeum 

"The reader may derive much enter- 
tainment from a series of clever sketches 
delating to persons, customs, and scenery, 
partly American, partly Euglish."— Ob- 
-server. 

"Quaint in construction and singular in 
manner, may be taken as a true definition 
'of this American story ; the plot is amus- 
ing."— Bell's Messenger. 



6 



In 1 vol. post 8vo, 8s. 6d. 

Dissent and Democracy, 

THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS AND COMMON OBJECT. 
AN HISTORICAL REVIEW. 
By RICHARD MASHEDER, B.A., 
Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge ; and of the Inner Temple. 

[Ready. 



" Mr. Masheder is a scholar ; Iris quota- 
tions are always apposite and seldom hack- 
neyed. He writes a little too flowingly, 
perhaps, but in a pleasant style, and he 
always keeps to the point ; moreover, he 
has the merit of having massed his facts 
very ably, and put his case filth singular 
clearness. "Saturday Review. 

" No one can arise from a perusal of Mr. 
Masheder's book without admiring his 
earnestness in the cause of Church and 
State."— John Bull. 

" We thank the author of this important 
volume, and we hope it will be read, both 
for its correct historical exhibition of Dis- 
sent ; and also for its counsels to Church- 
men in the presence of a vigilant foe."— 
Clerical Journal. 



"We can recommend it most heartily to 
our readers. It is one of the ablest modern 
productions. Its author is completely 
master of his subject, from his own stand- 
point ; he has done a service for which we 
unfeignedly thank him."— Church Times. 

" Mr. Masheder's book is full of valuable 
information, and bristles with cogent in- 
ference ; and we strongly recommend it 
to all those who are concerned about the 
political fortunes of the Church."— Church 
Review. 

"It is impossible to overrate the im- 
portance of the topics which form the 
subject matter of the present volume. 
Extremely well worth reading, and replete 
with good sense."— Press. 



In 1 large vol. 8vo, price 21s. 

Australian Explorations. 

JOHN McDOUALL STUART'S JOURNALS OF EXPLO- 
RATIONS IN AUSTRALIA from 1858 to 1862. 
Edited by WILLIAM HARD MAN, M.A., F.R.G.S., &c. 
Illustrated with a Portrait of the author, and 12 page Engravings 
on Wood, drawn by George French Angas, from Sketches 
taken during the Expedition, and accompanied by a 
carefully-prepared Map of the Explorer's Route across 

the entire Continent. [Ready. 



" A very large and valuable addition t o 
our geographical knowledge of Australia." 
— Observer. 

"Worthy of being ranked amongst the 
most important in the History of Austra- 
lian discovery." — Morning Advertiser. 

"To dilate on the value of the work to 
the very large number who are directly 
or indirectly interested in Australian 
progress is superfluous." — Dispatch. 

"It is impossible to refrain from the 
strongest admiration of the narrative, 
given in his own Journal, in which so 
much unpretending unconscious heroism 
is evinced, such simple devotion to the 
end of his enterprise ; thankfulness, not 
self -laudation at its accomplishment, hold- 



ing his life so rightly so that his duty 
might be done." — Globe. 

" These journals abound in interesting 
information, and have a special charm as 
living records of what the discoverer has 
seen and done."— Examiner. 

"We can commend the book to the 
careful perusal of those who wish to 
appreciate something of the future of 
Australia." — Morning Star. 

" The conductor of the expedition has 
earned lasting fame for the sterling quali- 
ties which he proved himself to possess. 
Throughout the toilsome journeys, of 
which he has given a minute and graphic 
account, he evinced every qualification 
which should characterise the leader 
such expeditions." — Morning Post. 



7 



1 Vol. Foolscap 8vo, 5s. 

A Piece of Bread. 

From the French of M. Jean Mace". 

By Mrs. ALFRED GATTY. 

Author of " Parables from Nature," "Legendary Tales," &c. 

[Ready. 



"Mrs. Gatty has here favoured the 
public with a volume weighty in its matter, 
fascinating in its form, and in its moral 
and religious tone above all praise."— 
London Review. 

" This work, especially intended for the 
use of the young, explains in a manner 
both intelligible and interesting, ' the 
history of life as sustained and supported 
in the human race.' " — Dispatch. 

" "Written in a reverent spirit deserving 
of commendation— a fact that the name of 
the translator alone would guarantee."— 
John Bull. 

" To Mrs. Gatty great praise is due. * * 
* * * The translation seems excellent. A 
charming little book."— Church Review. 

" Let us commend this pleasant little 
book to parents and guardians throughout 



the length and breadth of the British 
dominions, since it is one of the very best 
of its class that we have met with."— Bell's 
Messenger. 

"It exhibits the honest pains, the desire 
to please, the unmistakeable labour, which 
characterise all Mrs. Gatty undertakes 
for the acceptance of the public."— Press. 

" This little book has reached its eighth 
edition on the other side of the Channel, 
having been adopted by the University 
Commission of Paris among their prize 
books. "—A therucum. 

" Written for children, grown up people 
will read .-it with profit and pleasure. 
Eight editions have made the French 
public familiar with the original, and Mrs. 
Gatty has conferred no slight boon on tho 
English by a translation which faithfully 
preserves its best features."— Spectator. 



Also, 

PART II. 

Completing the Work, [Just ready. 



Vol. II. 



The Marquess of Dalhousie s Adminis- 
tration of British India. 

Bv EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., of University College, Oxford. 
3 [In the press. 

The Kennel Stud Book. 

Edited by " CECIL." [In preparation. 



In 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 

Shakspere Weighed in an Even Balance. 

By the Rev. ALFRED P OWN ALL, M.A. 
Vicar of Trowse Newton and Fakenham, late Crosse's Theological 
Scholar, Cambridge, &c. L^ady 



8 



In 1 vol. 8vo, 12s. 

A Theodicy ; or, Vindication of the 

DIVINE GLORY as MANIFESTED in the CONSTITUTION 
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE MORAL WORLD. 

By ALBERT TAYLOR BLEDSOE, LL.D., 
Professor of Mathematics in the University of Virginia. 
Dedicated to the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. 

[Ready. 

confidence to the clergy at large." — Cleri- 
cal Journal. 

"An able, ingenious, and learned 
volume. " — Edinburgh Courant. 

"The volume deserves the serious atten- 
tion of the theologian." — Press. 

" We can recommend this volume to 
our readers with the assurance that they 
will derive much benefit from following 
the author through the various steps of 
his argument." — Scottish Guardian. 

" None can question the fairness of his 
statements or the general cogency of his 
reasoning." — Morning Post. 



"Considering the importance of the 
Subject, the book is reasonably concise, 
and the style and literary execution gene- 
rally are creditable to the learned author. 
It is more readable and more easily under- 
stood than such treatises usually are." — 
Spectator. 

"Dr. Bledsoe's work has the pre-emi- 
nent merit of being mainly true." — Lite- 
rary Churchman. 

" In these times of desultory reading, 
a work like this will brace up the mental 
powers, and be suggestive of many noble 
thoughts, and we recommend it with much 



1 vol. post 8vo, illustrated, 12s. 

Hunting Tours. 

By "CECIL.'' 



"The book is a contribution to the 
subject which has long been wanted, and 
which reflects the greatest credit upon 
the author for his composition, and the 
publishers for their discrimination in 
bringing it before the public in its present 
attractive form." — Sporting Gazette. 

"'Hunting Tours' will afford interest 
and amusement to all classes of readers. 
The work is admirably illustrated by E. 
Corbet, and beautifully got up both as to 
type and binding. " — Sporting Review. 

" There is scarcely any topic connected 
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